NYPL RESEARCH LIBRARIES 3 3433 07956025 0 uenan fif ERNEST RENAN. THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY ASTOR, L€NOX A*© YlLtJEN FQUN0AT1OI*. THE *g*gyt«gat«£«jft** LIFE OF JESUS By ERNEST RENAN WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH By WILLIAM G. HUTCHINSON COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME "Jesus is tW Li*M Of tlief World." > A. L. BURT COMPANY, PUBLISHERS, 52-58 DUANE STREET, NEW YORK * * \ ASTOft, LENOX- Akir» 1914 , ,'..,.',... TO .... ... . ...>...................•... 1 Introduction, in Which the Sources of This History Are Prin- cipally Treated 25 CHAPTER I. Place of Jesus in the History of the World ..♦•«.. 67 CHAPTER II. Infancy and Youth of Jesus — His First Impressions. ...» 81 CHAPTER III. Education of Jesus o, ....... ................»:.:.] 89 CHAPTER IV. The Order of Thought Which Surrounded the Development of Jesus 99 CHAPTER V. The First Sayings of Jesus — His Ideas of a Divine Father and of a Pure Religion — First Disciples -. 119 CHAPTER VI. John the Baptist — Visit of Jesus to John, and His Abode in the Desert of Judea — Adoption of the Baptism of John... 135 CHAPTER VII. Development of the Ideas of Jesus Respecting the Kingdom of God 148 vU *ni CONTENTS. CHAPTER VIII. PAGE. Jesus at Capernaum 160 CHAPTER IX. The Disciples of Jesus 173 CHAPTER X. The Preachings on the Lake . 184 CHAPTER XI. The Kingdom of God Conceived as the Inheritance of the Poor. 194 CHAPTER XII. Embassy from John in Prison to Jesus — Death of John — Rela- tions of His School with That of Jesus 206 CHAPTER XIII. First Attempts on Jerusalem 213 CHAPTER XIV. Intercourse of Jesus with the Pagans and the Samaritans. . . . 227 CHAPTER XV. Commencement of the Legends Concerning Jesus — His Own Idea of His Supernatural Character 235 CHAPTER XVI. Miracles 248 CHAPTER XVII. Definitive Form of the Ideas of Jesus Respecting the Kingdom of God 259 CHAPTER XVIII. Institutions of Jesus 273 CONTEXTS. ix CHAPTER XIX. PAGE. Increasing Progression of Enthusiasm and of Exaltation 285 CHAPTER XX. Opposition to Jesus 295 CHAPTER XXI. Last Journey of Jesus to Jerusalem ••••• 305 CHAPTER XXII. Machinations of the Enemies of Jesus 319 CHAPTER XXIII. Last Week of Jesus 329 CHAPTER XXIV. Arrest and Trial of Jesus ........... 344 CHAPTER XXV. Death of Jesus ..w......> 360 CHAPTER XXVI. Jesus in the Tomb 370 CHAPTER XXVII. Fate of the Enemies of Jesus 376 CHAPTER XXVIII. Essential Character of the Work of Jesus 381 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH The year i860 marked an important point in the life of Ernest Renan. Having acquired, by years of hard work and unremitting study, a European reputa- tion as man of letters and as a writer of authority on the Semitic languages and Oriental archaeology, he was commissioned by the Imperial Government to pro- ceed to Syria and undertake an expedition in quest of ancient Phoenician monuments, sites, and inscriptions. For this welcome opportunity of coming face to face [with the land whose peoples, languages, and traditions had been of life-long and absorbing interest to him, IRenan was probably indebted to his friend, Prince Napoleon ("Plon Plon"), and, in a still greater de- gree, to a remarkable woman, Madame Cornu, to whose influence with Napoleon III. were due impor- tant improvements in higher education and the promo- tion of scientific and archaeological research by the state. Renan's Phoenician expedition was perhaps the most notable of the scientific missions undertaken at the national cost. Renan reached Beyrout in October. He was accom- panied by his wife and his sister Henriette; and the latter remained with him after Madame Renan's en- forced return to France. She was his constant com- panion and assistant; but he went home alone. At [Byblus brother and sister were simultaneously stricken rwith fever, and Renan awoke from a long interval of unconsciousness to find that Henriette was dead. This 1 2 LIFE OF JESUS. bereavement was the great sorrow of a happy life. Like Madame Cornu, Henriette had been a silent bene- factor, a good genius of whom the world knew little but of whom her brother knew much. From his short biographical sketch — originally printed for private cir- culation— and from the volume of correspondence recently published, one may learn how deeply he was indebted to her tender and unselfish solicitude, to her unfailing love, and to her unswerving intellectual hon- esty. As is related in the exquisitely phrased dedica- tion to the present volume, the Life of Jesus had been begun, carried on, and, in its first form, completed dur- ing Renan's stay in Palestine, in the midst of the scenes in which the tragic story it relates had taken place. How clearly the essential features of the Syrian landscape impressed themselves on the historian, and with what subtle charm he rendered those impressions, one may judge from the praise that has been bestowed on his description by later travellers. But, while the Life of Jesus was in a high degree inspired by Renan's sojourn in the East, there can be no doubt that it would have been written had the author never left France. In a sense his whole pre- vious life had formed a preparation for his task of chronicling the beginnings of Christianity, and all his studies had been subsidiary to the historical treatment of what, in his view, was the most significant cycle of events in history. In an essay, first published about ten years before his visit to the East, he had submitted some previous historians of Jesus to a critical exami- nation, the most interesting feature of which is the section devoted to Strauss, whose first Life of Jesus had appeared in 1835. Despite his high appreciation gf the German writer, Renan's view of Jesus as an BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 3 actual person, the events of whose career were rather nuclei of legendary tradition than pure myths, and his characteristically French distrust of metaphysical the- ory, somewhat qualify his praise of the Leben Jesu. It was only after careful revision that Renan's own book was given to the world. Considering the effusive emotion that not infrequently characterizes the work, even in its final form, one may feel some gratitude for the fact that Renan, according to his own account, spent a year in toning down the exuberance of his first draft.1 On its publication in 1863 it was soon appar- ent that the Life of Jesus was to be one of the most hotly discussed books of the century. By a very large public it was welcomed with undiscriminating ap- plause. As Sainte-Beuve acutely remarked, we find in modern society a considerable number of persons, not believers, and yet at the same time neither decidedly nor systematically sceptical. Having, like Renan him- self, a very full appreciation of the luxury of religious emotion, they are too deeply impressed with vague notions of the omnipotence of science, and, more or less unconsciously, have absorbed the modern spirit too much to be enticed back to the ancient ways. To this large body of readers, somewhat nebulous in their opinions, and disinclined to justify them in self-exami- nation, Renan appealed with great success. It was pleasing for them to find that they had been Christians sans le savoir, and Christians without the difficulties and intellectual self-surrender of less easily satisfied souls. That the excessive praise of such readers as these should be balanced by a no less excessive depre- ciation on the part of the orthodox, and that the latter should turn and attempt to rend the new apostle to the lSouvenirs d'Enfance ct dc Jcuncssc, p. 355. , A LIFE OF JESUS. Laodiceans, was but natural. Archbishops, Jesuits, priests, theological professors, and dissenting ministers joined eagerly in a heresy hunt of unprecedented di- mensions, the heavens were darkened with a multitude of pamphlets, and reviews, and controversial treatises ; pulpits rang with indignant denunciations; Renan's private character was picturesquely defamed; and an anonymous but pious lady, with the best intentions in the world, commenced the monthly dispatch to him of a letter containing the brief warning, "There is a hell !" That biography is one of the least facile of arts, that its really great and successful examples can be counted on the fingers, is almost platitude. The difficulties of adequately analyzing one of our fellows, of reaching the secrets of his inmost nature, of satisfactorily ac- counting for his often inconsistent actions and ideas, are such as to make the path of the biographer one of great difficulty. While the novelist has only to obey his own aesthetic conscience and avoid any decided breach of probability, the writer of biography must necessarily come into conflict with those whose concep- tions of his subject are already formed, and as diverse from his own as they well can be. And when that subject happens to be a man of a different age, of a dif- ferent race, the materials for whose life are at once scanty and in great part untrustworthy, it is easy to see that the pitfalls and risk of error incidental to all biog- raphy are increased tenfold. All these difficulties Renan had in his work, and, over and above, he had the special difficulty of dealing with a subject in which everybody takes an interest, of which everybody has a theory, of which many people have a theory that in their minds is a certainty to be defended with pas- sionate zeal, and with every available weapon. BIOGBAPHICAL SKETCH. $ It was perhaps only to be expected that orthodox critics of the last category should disregard their Mas- ter's aphorism about casting the first stone, and charge Renan with the terrible offence of having an a priori theory of his subject. Why it was unfair for him to have his own theory of Jesus, and how indeed he could have avoided forming one, are matters too deep for me to fathom. Dean Farrar, and for that matter, the author of the fourth Gospel, have never, so far as I know, been accused of unfairness on the ground that they had a firm belief in the divinity of Jesus before commencing their respective biographies. Interest in a subject is surely essential to its adequate treatment, and interest implies the formation of opinions. But the champions of religious dogmas, whatever the particular creed held by them, have never looked with favor on the formation of opinions other than their own. Sois mon frcre on je vous tue is a phrase that might come very appropriately from the lips of religious fanatics, whether Mohammedan zealots put- ting captive towns to the sword, or the officers of the Inquisition chastening heretics and freethinkers with a foretaste of hell fire. Of course nobody thought of putting Renan on the rack or tying him to the stake; but the doctrine that error — for which read deviation from orthodox theory — is a sin, colored every reply to his book that came from the orthodox forces. How- ever the leaders of these forces might differ among themselves, they were agreed that Christianity stands or falls by miracles and the supernatural, that any one who does not admit the divinity of Jesus is not quali- fied to write about him, and that, if he does write, his work is valueless, or rather, pernicious. In fairness it should be added that zealots at the opposite pole of 6 LIFE OF JESUS. thought, agreeing with their opponents that the exist- ence of Christianity depends on the miraculous, at- tacked Renan with great warmth, on the ground that he unduly glorified the subject of his biography.1 The sceptical friend whom Sainte-Beuve introduces into his critique of the Life of Jesus is very severe on what he regards as unnecessary concessions on the part of the author. Renan, he says, resembles Charles II. telling General Monk to be anything he likes except king ; all titles, all honors, all glories are to be ascribed to Jesus so long as he is not called God.2 For freethinkers who have grown conservative in their disbelief all assertion of the positive value, the enduring truth immanent in Christianity must be more or less galling; and passage from a Christianity relying on miracles and metaphysical theories about vicarious sacrifice, incarnation, and the Council of the Trinity to a Christianity relying on every-day human experience, must also be painful to those who think these miracles and theories essential to their faith. To Renan, how- ever, such an assertion and such a passage seemed necessary, and credit for having done his best in the matter may at least be accorded him, however much his work may be attacked as regards execution and detail. Of the principal orthodox controversial works directed against the Vie de Jesus, I do not think it unfair to say that in them all the greater part of the adverse criticism, except such as might proceed equally well from an agnostic, is based on the assumption that, Jesus being God, Renan had no right to give him the *See, for example, Opinion des deistes rationalistes sur la Vie de Jesus selon M. Renan, par P. Larroque, Paris, 1863, a work which amply justifies the saying- of the Gonconrts, that when in- credulity becomes a faith it is more unreasonable than religion. 2Sainte-Beuve, Nouvcaux Lundis, torn. vi. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. same biographical treatment as he would have given to Socrates or Mohammed. In other words, he was wrong in weighing probabilities, in examining evi- dence, using that which seemed valuable and rejecting that which seemed valueless, or, in short, in using any of the comparative methods employed in writing secu- lar history. To take some obvious instances, he had no right to assume that unusual events, alleged to have taken place in uncritical times when people were too little acquainted with Nature to distinguish between it and super-nature, and not observed to recur in times when they can be scientifically tested, are unworthy of full credence ; he had no right to point out the falsifica- tion by reality of the belief cherished by Jesus, or his reporters, of the imminent coming of the Messiah to judge and reign over the earth;1 he had no right to remark on the obvious differences between the synoptic Jesus and the Jesus of the fourth Gospel, or to base his conception of the Master on the no less obvious fact that, historically, the former Jesus is much the more possible. But the Life of Jesus was not primarily intended as a work of religious edification, though indeed I once heard an "anti-infidel" lecturer in Hyde Park call it one of his favorite books; it was an attempt at a his- torical view of the life and work "of a wonderful spirit, far above the heads of his reporters, still farther above the head of our popular theology, which has added its own misunderstanding of the reporters to the report- ers' misunderstanding of Jesus."2 In other words, lThe extremely significant sayings reported in Matt. x. 23, Luke xxi. 32, and Luke ix. 27, should be noted. See also 1 Cor. vii. 29; Philipp. iv. 5; 1 Peter iv. 7; 1 John ii. 18; James v. 8, 9; I, Thess. iv. 16, 17. 2Matthew Arnold, Literature and Dogma, p. 119. LIFE OF JESUS. Renan considered it essential to his purpose not to con- ceive of his authorities as supernaturally inspired works — which, as his orthodox critics usually forget, remains to be proved — but as books full of contradic- tions, myths, and naive ignorance, in which the truth is only to be found by a process of sifting. "Criti- cism," as he remarked, "knows of no infallible texts ; its first principle is to admit the possibility of error in the text which it studies."1 It need scarcely be added that, while every serious student has long admitted this as an axiom for general historical investigation, it is only recently, and with considerable reluctance, that the principle has been partially adopted by orthodox writers dealing with religious history. To approach the critical consideration of an historical work there is then but one legitimate method — to inquire first, What are its authorities? and, secondly, What use has been made of these authorities? Let us briefly consider these two questions in relation to the present work. Renan's chief authorities may be classed under five heads: (i) The works of Philo; (2) those of Jose- phus; (3) the so-called Apocryphal books of the Old Testament; (4) the Talmud, and (5) the Gospels and other New Testament writings. Of course, besides these principal sources of information, there were in- numerable others. Renan's encyclopaedic reading, and his faculty for collecting and systematizing his knowl- edge, make his pages bristle with references and cita- tions. It was remarked of Hume that his History of England would have been more accurate but for his occasional necessity of imagining his facts, from the difficulty of navigating his portly person to the other end of the sofa where the means of verification lay. xVie de Jisus: Preface de la I3rae edition, p. 5. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 3 However much one may ascribe to Renan's imagina- tion, his industry in collecting and utilizing evidence from every quarter cannot be gainsaid. It will be well to give a brief outline of his views on the writings stated above. The study of Philo permits one to judge of the ideas that were active in the world immediately before the birth of Jesus and during his lifetime. Although Philo lived in a Judaistic centre altogether removed from that of Jesus, and though there is no probability of his ever having even heard of him, there are curious paral- lelisms between the teachings of the Alexandrian doc- tor and those of the peasant of Nazareth. Similar parallelisms are also to be noted, it is true, with the recorded Logia of Hillel and other Jewish teachers anterior to Jesus.1 The works of Josephus, the Old Testament apocryphal writings (such as the book of Enoch, the Assumption of Moses, the Jewish portion of the Sibylline Poems, and the book of Daniel2) and xSee pp. 23 and 285. I hardly think, however, that Renan lays sufficient stress on the points of contact between the Hindu re- ligions and Christian doctrine. Without taking Schopenhauer's extreme view, that an agreement is brought about in the most essential matters between Old Testament doctrines and the In- dian religions, and that everything which is true in Christianity is to be found in Brahmanism and Buddhism — a view which obviously implies the satisfaction of "jesting Pilate's" demand for a definition of truth— there can be no doubt that resemblances exist, resemblances which extend to form as well as to idea. Thus the saying of Jesus, "The kingdom of heaven is within you," and his comparison with a grain of mustard seed may be placed be- side,"This Self of mine in the heart within is smaller than a grain of rice, or a grain of mustard seed, or a grain of millet, or a grain of millet's kernel; this Self of mine, in the heart within, is greater than the earth, greater than the air, greater than heaven, greater than these worlds" (Chhandogya Upanishad, iii. 14, 3). 2 Some of Renan's reasons for classing the book of Daniel with the apocryphal writings may be briefly summarized. The char- acter of the two languages in which it is written, the use of Greek words, the definite and dated account of events extending almost to the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, the incorrect details ol 10 LIFE OF JESUS. the Talmud, are of like service in giving a picture of contemporary thought and history and of the motive forces influencing them. Renan believes the notice of Jesus in the history of Josephus to be, in the main, authentic, although probably retouched by the Chris- tians, who regarded his work as an essential document in their history and — probably in the second century — circulated an edition of it, corrected in accordance with their own ideas. The possible connection of the author of Luke and the Acts with Josephus I shall remark on later. In the Talmud (the compilation of which, Renan thinks, extended from about 200 to 500 a. d.) innumerable and important details of the Gospels find a commentary. Jewish theology and Christian theology having followed two parallel paths, the history of one cannot be understood without reference to the other. The New Testament writings were naturally the main foundation for the Life of Jesus, and the author's use of them one of the principal points of attack by orthodox critics, the latter's grievance being his separ- ation of what he regarded as historical from what he considered legendary and of the nature of Aberglaube. It was, of course, in the Synoptics, especially in Mark and Matthew, that he found most trustworthy material for the making of his history. But neither in Matthew nor in Mark in their present form do we have the origi- nal Gospels attributed to these writer* The first rec- ords of Jesus must, of course, have been oral. It was only when eye-witnesses were beginning to disappear, and when the idea of a closely approaching heavenly Babylon, the apocalyptic character of the visions, and the place of the book in the Hebrew canon outside the series of the Proph- ets, lead him to think that the work was a fruit of the great re- ligious exaltation caused among the Jews by the persecution of Antiochus. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 11 kingdom seemed to recede farther and farther into the future, that adherents sought to give floating reminis- cence of their Master a durable form, and to write down the sayings and anecdotes that were in danger of being forgotten. And with these authentic reports of the sayings and doings of Jesus, it requires no great knowledge of human nature to believe, many others of an apocryphal kind must have been mingled. The members of the early Church, on special occasions or when confronted by special difficulties, must often have pondered what Jesus would have had to say about the matter. Considering that there was no settled New Testament canon, and that the material now forming this canon was then in a fluid state, it is easy to see how such hypothetical utterances, by passing from mouth to mouth, might ultimately be accepted as authentic. The first written Gospel was that known as the Gospel of the Hebrews, which was extant among the Judaistic Christians of Syria, until their destruc- tion in the fifth century; and it somewhat resembled the Gospel of Matthew, though the latter was a per- fectly distinct work. Mark indeed, a short biography dealing mainly with the acts of Jesus, was the first synoptic Gospel to be written, and the author of Mat- thew used both it and the Hebrew Gospel in the com- position of his work, which is distinctively a report of the Logia or sayings of Jesus.1 Neither of these Gos- pels could remain absolutely fixed. Even in the second century oral tradition was preferred, and, no doubt, those who possessed copies of one of the books were in the habit of adding details which might reach them xPapias, bishop of Hierapolis (In the first half of the second century), draws this distinction; he speaks of an anecdotic nar- rative written by Mark from remijniscences derived from the apostle Peter, and of a collection of sayings made by Matthew. 12 LIFE OF JESUS. from other sources, and of combining and amplifying narratives. The Gospel of Luke is of a nature different from the more or less fragmentary Gospels of Mark and Mat- thew. "It is the work of a man who selects, prunes, combines." In other words, it is a professedly com- plete history founded on previous documents. Renan does not think it probable that Luke, whom he holds to be the author of the Acts, knew the Gospel of Matthew, but he assimilated the whole of Mark, while about a third part of his book is to be found in neither the first nor the second Synoptic but comes from other sources. Luke's Gospel, in contrast to the more exclusive spirit of Peter, James, and the Judaistic Christians, is the Gospel of universal brotherhood and forgiveness of sins, and would appear to be the work of a disciple of Paul, a partisan for the admission of Gentiles, publi- cans, sinners, and heretics into the Christian commun- ity, an exponent of the wider view of the Master's teaching as applicable to all men in all lands.1 Renan, who does not attach the same historical value to Luke as to Mark and Matthew, dates it from Rome about the end of the first century, and he attributes the many analogies between it and the history of Josephus to the authors' contemporary residence in that city. An even more direct connection between the two writers is maintained by Holtzmann and other German critics, proceeding on the generally recognized assumption that Luke was not a Jew but a Gentile Christian, from which they postulate that he got his knowledge of Jew- ish history from Josephus, whose works were largely circulated in Rome at the time. *Note, for instance, that in Luke seventy disciples are sent out by Jesus, in the other Gospels only twelve. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 13 However difficult the problem of the dates and con- nection of the Synoptics might be, and whatever care- ful discrimination was required in order to settle even tentatively the historical value that could be reasonably attached to them, the Gospel known as that of John presented difficulties of a still more serious nature, difficulties which Renan recognized by completely changing his views regarding the fourth Gospel in the thirteenth edition of the Life of Jesus, and devoting many pages to a discussion and defense of his new position. The theories, which have been, and are, held of the authenticity of the Gospel in question may be conveniently divided into four classes. In the first place we have the ordinary orthodox view, which re- quires no comment, that the fourth Gospel was written by John, son of Zebedee, that the facts recounted in it actually occurred, and that the discourses it attributes to Jesus were really uttered by him. Secondly, there is the theory, adopted by Renan in the earlier editions of his book, that the fourth Gospel is substantially the work of the apostle John, although it may have been edited and retouched by his disciples, that the events related are direct traditions, but that the discourses are frequently free compositions, only expressing the way in which the author conceived of the mind of Jesus. This comparatively moderate theory, held by Reuss, Ewald, and others, is in strong contrast to the more thoroughgoing scepticism of Baur, Strauss, Reville, and the Tubingen school generally, who main- tained the absolute untrustworthiness of the fourth Gospel, and the impossibility of regarding its relation of either events or discourses as historical. In short, we have before us a work of imagination, partly alle- gorical, in which the author's intention is not to give a !f4 LIFE OF JESUS. plain biographical narrative, but to disseminate his own views of Jesus. Renan's instinctive dislike to taking extreme or negative views, or at least to enunciating them dis- tinctly, led him finally to a position midway between the theory originally held by him and the last-men- tioned hypothesis. He regarded the fourth Gospel as not being the work of John, but as having been at- tributed to him by its author, one of his disciples writ- ing about the year ioo. The discourses are, he thought, entirely fictitious, or at least only represent the teaching of Jesus as Plato's Dialogues represent that of Socrates, but the narrative portions include valuable traditions, in part derived directly from John. Considering that Renan devotes more than a hundred closely printed pages to justifying and amplifying the theory which I have just epitomized, it is obviously im- possible for me to deal adequately with the matter in the limits of a short introduction. I can only give, therefore, the briefest outline of his reasons for aban- doning his first and more conservative conception, and for not adopting that of Tubingen. To determine the approximate date of a literary work, it is admittedly necessary to take external evi- dence by finding when it was first mentioned or quoted. It is in the present instance significant that neither Polycarp, who was one of John's most devoted dis- ciples, nor Papias, who must have had intercourse with some of John's followers and was ever eager for any scraps of tradition he could collect, says a word of a written Gospel by John, while Justin, even if he knew the wrork, does not connect it with the author of the Apocalypse. Moreover, in the pseudo-Clementine Homilies, in Marcion, and in the apocryphal Gospels, BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 15 there is no indication of the fourth Gospel being given the same canonical authority as those of the Synoptics. On the other hand, it must have been written not later than ioo, before full canonicity had been acquired by the synoptic Gospels, since otherwise it would have scarcely diverged so far from them; and it must have won its own place in the canon toward the close of the second century, for it played an important part in a theological controversy concerning the Passover at Laodicea about 170, and Theophilus of Antioch (about 180) positively asserts it to be from the pen of John. This stamp of authenticity, moreover, argues the exist- ence of the book (probably as an edifying though un- canonical work) for some time preceding; such honor would scarcely have been accorded to a recent nar- rative. What is to be gleaned from internal evidence? The author, whoever he was, attempts to pose as John, as an eye-witness of the events recorded, and throughout is manifest his desire to show that apostle in the best light, to exhibit him as taking a leading role, as being "the disciple whom Jesus loved." In accordance with the wish to make the narrative appear the relation of an actual observer, there is much apparent exactitude of detail on many small points,1 and in these Renan sees traditions proceeding directly from John. But, of course, the chief characteristic of the book is its dis- courses— discourses in which the exact position of the supernatural Jesus is stated with a metaphysical sub- tlety which in no way harmonizes with the Logia of the Synoptics, or indeed with what one might naturally expect from a poor peasant belonging to a race which had, up to that time, exhibited no taste for abstract 'See, for example, John ii. 6; iv. 52; v. 5; vi. 9, 19; xxi. II. tI0 LIFE OF JESUS. speculation, but which is entirely consistent with the intellectual state of Asia Minor at the time at which Renan supposes the Gospel to have been written. It is also to be noted that parables and exorcisms of demons, both frequent in the Synoptics, are entirely wanting. What argues moreover against the idea that this meta- physical treatise on the Logos could have been written by a Jewish fisherman, "an apostle of the circum- cision," is that the author speaks of the Jews, their ceremonies and festivals, from an outsider's point of view, and almost disdainfully.1 From these arguments which I have briefly summarized, Renan concludes that the fourth Gospel is not one of the earlier Christian books, and that it has not the same value to the his- torian as those attributed to Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Between the two conceptions implied in this contrast choice must be made : "If Jesus spoke as Mat- thew represents him, he could not have spoken as John represents him." Into an examination of Renan's exegetical theories I do not propose to enter. Such an examination would occupy a great many pages, and, after all, would only appeal to specialists. But one does not require to be a specialist in order to form an opinion of Renan's treat- ment of his subject, and of the general lines of the work as history and as literature. Its merits as a piece of literature are indeed very great. That supremely beautiful instrument for prose, the French language, has seldom been handled with higher distinction or with more consummate mastery than in certain pas- sages of the Life of Jesus, passages of haunting beauty, which nevertheless are not of the nature of "purple ^ee, for example, John ii. 6, 13; vi. 4; x. 31, 33', xviii. 36; xix. 3i> 38, 42. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 1? patches," but have the quality of being integral and in- evitable parts of the work in its totality. He had in- deed subject-matter which was, in many respects, of great beauty morally and aesthetically, and it naturally inspired one of such extreme sensitivity to moral and aesthetic beauty. But he had the defects of his quali- ties in full measure. A friendly critic phrased the matter very neatly. "It must be confessed," said Reville, "that on the whole his Jesus appeals less to conscience than to the aesthetic sense." That in him legitimate and honest sentiment was but too ready to turn to sentimentalism, that occasionally he seems to feel for the mere pleasure of feeling, and betrays him- self with such false and jangled notes as the sentimen- talist is doomed to strike, is only too evident. Far too often the mingled nobility and sweetness of his utter- ance is apt to lose the former element and become almost nauseously saccharine in intensity. It is like passing from the Good Friday music in Parsifal to the treacly mysticism of the Stahat Mater. Facilis des- census— once let Renan begin to lose himself in clouds of universal benevolence and nebulous religiosity, and he perseveres in the downward course until the end of a chapter brings him back to his subject. This tendency of his art to over-reach itself and defeat its own object is manifest, not only in the style, but in the whole plan and character of the book. l£ begins with pastoral comedy and ends with tragedy. Obviously the antith- esis is intended, but not less obviously the insistence with which it is urged makes it forced, unreal, almost theatrical. This is particularly characteristic of the earlier chapters of the book. Jesus is a sort of theo- logical troubadour, the disciples a band of "happy chil- dren," amiable enthusiasts whose innocent doubts are ■:•=" 18 LIFE OF JESUS. gently but triumphantly crushed with a smile or a look, their life a delectable combination of idyllic vagrancy and fetes champetres. Orthodox conceptions of the founder and the beginnings of Christianity have as- suredly been often grotesque and unreal in all con- science, but it has been reserved for a professedly seri- ous student of history to put on record this Gospel in Dresden china, this picnic Christianity. Nor is the organic unity present which should make it possible for this charmant docteur with his douceur extraordinaire to be identified with the sombre geant of later days. I concede that the antithesis was actually existent, that Jesus on Calvary was very different from Jesus on the shore of Gennesareth, and I have the fullest apprecia- tion for Renan's treatment of the closing scenes of his tragedy, but I entirely fail to see that the former and latter Jesus as he presents them are consistent one with the other. From the same source proceeds his frequent laxity in the use of certain words and phrases. To turn a sen- tence, to elaborate a peroration, he permits himself a latitude of expression which, in cold blood, he would probably have softened down, if not repudiated. To take the most cogent instance, he certainly lays himself open to the cross fire of both orthodox and heterodox critics by his indiscriminate and irresponsible employ- ment of the words "God" and "Father," which might provoke a direct query as to whether he believed in a God or not, and, if not, why he constantly seemed to assume God's existence. One is sometimes persuaded of the truth of the saying that language was given to man to conceal thought. I am not forgetful that every man is entitled to his own definition of God; Spinoza was fond of repeating that "the love of God" was BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 19 man's summum bonum, and, by the phrase "love of God," expressing a passionate zeal in the quest of sci- entific truth. Yet, to say the least of it, such diverse definitions are somewhat bewildering to the plain man. And, as the plain man in his thousands was among Renan's readers, such equivocal usages of speech were scarcely commendable. The mention of Spinoza's name at this point may recall another aspect of that thinker's work, of interest in the present case — his naturalistic explanations of some Old Testament miracles — the Red Sea retreating before a strong wind, the Shunammite's son revived by the natural heat of Elisha's body, and so forth. In- genious attempts of this kind were not altogether to Renan's taste, but he has not much better to offer ; his treatment of miracles throughout is neither adequate nor satisfactory. In a manner scarcely worthy of a true critic, he makes no attempt to conceal his distaste for the whole matter, and, while he is too honest to minimize the importance of alleged supernatural occur- rences giving an initial impetus to the new religion, he insists on their mere trickery and fraud in terms that betray his anxiety to point out that Jesus had far rather have worked no miracles at all, that he only worked them because it was expected of him to do so, because, had he not chosen to be a thaumaturgist, he would have had no success. This idea of Jesus deliberately mak- lrig" his choice in the matter and reluctantly conceding to popular opinion, seems to me as grotesque as Renan's sweeping condemnation of thaumaturgists, in which order must necessarily be included Charcot, Heidenhain, and every modern physician who employs hypnotic suggestion as a therapeutic agent. If by such means disease can be successfully treated, why should 20 LIFE OF JESUS. they not be used? I think it was of Napoleon tfiaf an opposing general complained, that he won his vic- tories only by a culpable disregard of the laws of strategy. Nor are Renan's views embodied in a comprehensive and consistent whole; several miracles he does not men- tion at all, such as the incident of the Gadarene swine, that of the feeding of the multitude, and that of Jesus walking on the sea. On the production of wine from water at Cana he only bestows a passing reference without comment. In the majority of cases he adopts the well-known expedient of looking the difficulty boldly in the face, and passing on.1 He does not seem to have a sufficiently full appreciation of the value nf suggestion in the large number of pathological states due to neurotic causes. This, of course, may be ex- plained by the fact that the subject has in great meas- ure been investigated since the publication of his book. A valuable commentary on the Gospel miracles might be compiled, I imagine, from the clinical records of the Salpetriere. Such a commentary would probably show a very substantial basis of truth for the great majority of the healing miracles recorded of Jesus. These miracles indeed may well be considered sep- arately from those which are evidently of a mythical nature. In classifying or discussing occurrences of this kind, the first thing is to settle what we mean by a miracle. The orthodox person who asserts belief in miracles as infractions of the laws of Nature — that glib phrase for observed sequences of phenomena — 1An exception must be made in the case of the Lazarus miracle. Here Renan, abandoning his more plausible hypothesis of prema- ture burial, and following the somewhat far-fetched theory nf Strauss and Baur, complacently pronounces the whole affair .1 pious fiction. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 21 and the sceptic who denies them in a like manner, are equally exponents of a fallacy. Those who see in Nature limitless possibilities, who believe that Nature is all-inclusive and all-sufficing, who recognize that our science throws but a tiny flicker of light into the dark- ness around us, cannot accept the phrase "infraction of Nature" as being other than meaningless. "The day- fly has better grounds for calling a thunder-storm supernatural than has man, with his experience of an infinitesimal fraction of duration, to say that the most astonishing event that can be imagined is beyond the scope of natural causes."1 Renan, if I read him aright, has a tendency to imagine that the last word is said in the matter, that science can only speak negatively, that there is no hope of fresh light being cast. But those who see in experimental psychology a science, new indeed, but still a science, can scarcely endorse his verdict. To take a crucial instance : is the hypothesis that an apparition of the Master appeared to the dis- ciples after his death so utterly absurd, that Renan can afford to dismiss the point in half a page of rhetorical questions and unctuous platitudes about the disciples' devotion and the divine power of woman's love ? But, reversing the procedure of the prophet who was called to give curses and disappointed his employer by bestowing blessings, I am confining myself to merely negative criticism, when the occasion manifestly re- quires some assertion of the positive value of the work which follows. This positive value, I imagine, mainly resides in its subjective aspect, in its character as an account of the immensely important movement of a long past age by one of the most interesting and sensi- tive intellects of our own century. This subjective rT. H. Huxley, Life of Hume, p. 132. 23 LIFE OF JESUS. quality is, of course, so apparent on every page, that it is generally the first point of attack for those who engage in the adverse criticism of the book. Renan, indeed, is a good instance of the egoistic historian, the narrator who is rather lyrical than dramatic ; the Jesus with whom he presents us is a Renanized Jesus — a r°sus who is gentle, ironical, at times almost gay — a 'is, in short, who in many features resembles M. est Renan. But what would we have? A biog- aphy of Jesus suited to every one's taste is out of the question ; apart from necessary diversities of view, the materials are too scanty and too thickly encrusted with legend, for adequately historical treatment to be pos- sible. "So redf ich wenn ich Christus war" — "Had I been Christ I should have spoken so." The words might come from any one attempting such a treatment, a treatment which must less resemble history in its strict sense than the historical novel or play. Gaps, it is true, exist in all history, and the palm is to him who can best use his imagination in filling them up. But the history of the founder of Christianity consists mainly of gaps, and the personal equation being so important a feature in Renan' s literary labors, we need feel neither surprised nor indignant that his ingenious attempts at filling up these gaps should partake so greatly of the character of a personal revelation. Not only, indeed, have we a personal revelation in the Life of Jesus, we have a revelation of the time- spirit. I have already pointed out how aptly it fitted the intellectual and emotional temperament of a certain large number of persons ; but, in no small measure, it had a wider bearing and represented a general ten- dency. To use a modern cant phrase, it appeared at a psychological moment. The somewhat barren deism BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 23 of the eighteenth century, having fulfilled its purpose, had become a creed — or lack of creed — outworn. The deistic writers were fast fading into the limbo of ob- livion. They had not written in vain so far as in- fluence went, but if ■ their influence remained, their books were forgotten. It is only Voltaire's wit, and his flashes of humorous common sense, that attract even the limited amount of attention from readers that his "philosophical- works" now receive. Diderot, of course, was so much more than a destructive critic and facile wrriter, that, if anything, his reputation has a ten- dency to grow. But Holbach and his circle — Mira- baud, Freret, Dumarsis, and the rest, have gone the way to dusty death. Renan was not indeed the first French writer of this century to recognize the change which German exe- gesis had made in the problem. Reuss, Reville, and Scherer possess a European reputation as Biblical critics, and all three were active before the publication of the Life of Jesus; while the foundation of the Revue Germanique had also had a deep influence on the for- mation of intellectual opinion in France. But Renan was the first to draw the attention of a wider public than that of savants and men of letters; and there can be little doubt that his success was mainly due to those of his characteristics — his insistent idealism, his almost devotional unction, and, it must be confessed, his fre- quent sentimentalism — in which he most widely di- verged from the sceptics of the previous century. These sceptics, who were fond of the discussion, if not the practice of ethics, seemed scarcely to realize that the world was not to be regenerated by rational codes of morals and ideals of justice alone. As Renan points out with great force, two elements contributed 24 LIFE OF JESUS. to the success of Christianity, a miraculous element and a moral element. The former gave the necessary ini- tial impetus, the latter made the movement endure. In addition to these two powerful causes was the greatest cause of all — the assertion by Jesus of love as the prin- ciple that should underlie the whole conduct of life. The Greek and Roman philosophers had made justice this underlying principle. But justice is an abstraction not to be understanded by the people, or always by the philosophers themselves. Every one, on the other hand, can understand the love which Jesus taught as the greatest of all commandments, and, while he may see in it a counsel of perfection, can recognize aspira- tion toward that perfection as an essential feature in human progress. WILLIAM G. HUTCHISON. London, October, 1897. AUTHORS INTRODUCTION, In "Which the Sources of This History Are Principally Treated A history of the "Origin of Christianity" ought to embrace all the obscure, and, if one might so speak, subterranean periods which extend from the first be- ginnings of this religion up to the moment when its existence became a public fact, notorious and evident to the eyes of all. Such a history would consist of four books. The first, which I now present to the public, treats of the particular fact which has served as the starting-point of the new religion, and is entirely filled by the sublime person of the Founder. The second would treat of the apostles and their immediate dis- ciples, or rather, of the revolutions which religious thought underwent in the first two generations of Christianity. I would close this about the year ioo, at the time when the last friends of Jesus were dead, and when all the books of the New Testament were fixed almost in the forms in which we now read them. The third would exhibit the state of Christianity under the Antonines. We should see it develop itself slowly, and sustain an almost permanent war against the em- pire, which had just reached the highest degree of administrative perfection, and, governed by philoso- phers, combated in the new-born sect a secret and theo- cratic society which obstinately denied and incessantly undermined it. This book would cover the entire period of the second century. Lastly, the fourth book would show the decisive progress which Christianity made from the time of the Syrian emperors. We 26 26 LIFE OF JESUS. should see the learned system of the Antonines crum- ble, the decadence of the ancient civilization become irrevocable, Christianity profit from its ruin, Syria con- quer the whole West, and Jesus, in company with the gods and the deified sages of Asia, take possession of a society for which philosophy and a purely civil gov- ernment no longer sufficed. It was then that the relig- »us ideas of the races grouped around the Mediter- ranean became profoundly modified; that the Eastern religions everywhere took precedence; that the Chris- tian Church, having become very numerous, totally forgot its dreams of a millennium, broke its last ties with Judaism, and entered completely into the Greek and Roman world. The contests and the literary labors of the third century, which were carried on without concealment, would be described only in their general features. I would relate still more briefly the persecutions at the commencement of the fourth cen- tury, the last effort of the empire to return to its former principles, which denied to religious association any place in the State. Lastly, I would only foreshadow the change of policy which, under Constantine, re- versed the position, and made of the most free and spontaneous religious movement an official worship, subject to the State, and persecutor in its turn. I know not whether I shall have sufficient life and strength to complete a plan so vast. I shall be satis- fled if, after having written the Life of Jesus, I am per- mitted to relate, as I understand it, the history of the apostles, the state of the Christian conscience during the weeks which followed the death of Jesus, the for- mation of the cycle of legends concerning the resurrec- tion, the first acts of the Church of Jerusalem, the life of Saint Paul, the crisis of the time of Nero, the ap- AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION. T7 pearance of the Apocalypse, the fall of Jerusalem, the foundation of the Hebrew-Christian sects of Batanea, the compilation of the Gospels, and the rise of the great schools of Asia Minor originated by John. Every- thing pales by the side of that marvellous first century. By a peculiarity rare in history, we see much better what passed in the Christian wTorld from the year 50 to the year 75, than from the year 100 to the year 150. The plan followed in this history has prevented the introduction into the text of long critical dissertations upon controverted points. A continuous system of notes enables the reader to verify from the authorities all the statements of the text. These notes are strictly limited to quotations from the primary sources ; that is to say, the original passages upon which each assertion or conjecture rests. I know that for persons little ac- customed to studies of this kind many other explana- tions would have been necessary. But it is not my practice to do over again what has been already done well. To cite only books wrritten in French, those who will consult the following excellent writings1 will there find explained a number of points upon which I have been obliged to be very brief : Etudes Critiques sur VEvangile de saint Matthieu, par M. Al- bert Reville, pasteur de l'eglise Wallonne de Rotterdam.* Histoire de la Theologie Chretiennc au Siecle Apostolique, par M. Reuss, professeur a la Faculte de Theologie et au Seminairc Protestant de Strasbourg.8 aWhile this work was in the press, a book has appeared which I do not hesitate to add to this list, although I have not read it with the attention it deserves — Les Evangiles, par M. Gustave d'Eichthal. Premiere Partie : Examen Critique et Comparatif des Trois Premiers Evangiles. Paris, Hachette, 1863. 2Leyde, Noothoven van Goor, 1862. Paris, Cherbuliez. A work crowned by the Society of The Hague for the defence of the Christian religion. 'Strasbourg, Treuttel and Wurtz. 2nd edition, i860. Paris, Cherbuliez. xt LIFE OF JESUS. Des Doctrines Religieuses dcs Juifs pendant les Deux Sticks Anterieurs a I'Ere Chretienne, par M. Michel Nicolas, professeur a la Faculte de Theologie Protestante de Montauban.1 Vie de Jesus, par le Dr. Strauss ; traduite par M. Littre, Mem- bre de l'lnstitut.2 Revue de Theologie et de Philosophic Chretienne, publiee sous la direction de M. Colani, de 1850 a 1857. — Nouvelle Revue de Theologie, faisant suite a la precedente depuis 1858.3 The criticism of the details of the Gospel texts espe- cially, has been done by Strauss in a manner which leaves little to be desired. Although Strauss may be mistaken in his theory of the compilation of the Gos- pels;4 and although his book has, in my opinion, the fault of taking up the theological ground too much, and the historical ground too little,5 it will be neces- sary, in order to understand the motives which have guided me amidst a crowd of minutiae, to study the always judicious, though sometimes rather subtle argu- ment, of the book, so well translated by my learned 'friend, M. Littre. I do not believe I have neglected any source of in- formation as to ancient evidences. Without speaking of a crowd of other scattered data, there remain, re- specting Jesus, and the time in which he lived, five great collections of writings — 1st, The Gospels, and 1 Paris, Michel Levy freres, i860. 2 Paris, Ladrange. 2nd edition, 1856. 3 Strasbourg, Treuttel and Wurtz. Paris, Cherbuliez. 4The great results obtained on this point have only been ac- quired since the first edition of Strauss's work. The learned critic has, besides, done justice to them with much candor in his after editions. 5 It is scarcely necessary to repeat that not a word in Strauss's work justifies the strange and absurd calumny by which it has been attempted to bring into disrepute with superficial persons, a work so agreeable, accurate, thoughtful, and conscientious, though spoiled in its general parts by an exclusive system. Not only has Strauss never denied the existence of Jesus, but each page of his book implies this existence. The truth is, Strauss supposes the individual character of Jesus less distinct for us than it perhaps is in reality. 'AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION". 29 the writings of the New Testament in general ; 2d, The compositions called the "Apocrypha of the Old Testa- ment;" 3d, The works of Philo ;• 4th, Those of Jose- phus ; 5th, The Talmud. The writings of Philo have the priceless advantage of showing us the thoughts which, in the time of Jesus, fermented in minds occu- pied with great religious questions. Philo lived, it is true, in quite a different province of Judaism to Jesus, but, like him, he was very free from the littlenesses which reigned at Jerusalem; Philo is truly the elder brother of Jesus. He was sixty-two years old when the Prophet of Nazareth was at the height of his activ- ity, and he survived him at least ten years. What a pity that the chances of life did not conduct him into Galilee ! What would he not have taught us ! Josephus, writing specially for pagans, is not so can- did. His short notices of Jesus, of John the Baptist, of Judas the Gaulonite, are dry and colorless. We feel that he seeks to present these movements, so profoundly Jewish in character and spirit, under a form which would be intelligible to Greeks and Romans. I believe the passage respecting Jesus1 to be authentic. It is perfectly in the style of Josephus, and if this historian has made mention of Jesus, it is thus that he must have spoken of him. WTe feel only that a Christian hand has retouched the passage, has added a few words — without which it would almost have been blasphemous2 — has perhaps retrenched or modified some expres- sions.3 It must be recollected that the literary fortune of Josephus was made by the Christians, who adopted his writings as essential documents of their sacred his- lAnt., xviii. in. 3. 2"If it be lawful to call him a man." 3In place of xPt(>*bS ovroi rfv, he certainly had these xpicttoS ovroS k\syero. — Cf. Ant., xx. ix. 1. 30 LIFE OF JESUS, tory. They made, probably in the second century, an edition corrected according- to Christian ideas.1 At all events, that which constitutes the immense interest of Josephus on the subject which occupies us, is the clear light which he throws upon the period. Thanks to him, Herod, Herodias, Antipas, Philip, Annas, Caia- phas, and Pilate are personages whom we can touch with the finger, and whom we see living before us with a striking reality. The Apocryphal books of the Old Testament, espe- cially the Jewish part of the Sibylline verses, and the Book of Enoch, together with the Book of Daniel, which is also really an Apocrypha, have a primary im- portance in the history of the development of the Mes- sianic theories, and for the understanding of the con- ceptions of Jesus respecting the kingdom of God. The Book of Enoch especially, which was much read at the time of Jesus,2 gives us the key to the expression "Son of Man," and to the ideas attached to it. The ages of these different books, thanks to the labors of Alexan- der, Ewald, Dillmann, and Reuss, is now beyond doubt. Every one is agreed in placing the compilation of the most important of them in the second and first centuries before Jesus Christ. The date of the Book of Daniel is still more certain. The character of the two languages in which it is written, the use of Greek words, the clear, precise, dated announcement of events which reach even to the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, the incorrect descriptions of Ancient Babylonia, there ^usebius (Hist. Eccl., I. n. and Dcmonstr. Evang., iii. 5) cites the passage respecting Jesus as we now read it in Josephus. Ori- gen (Contra Celsus, i. 47; ii. 13) and Eusebius (Hist. Eccl., ii. 23) cite another Christian interpolation, which is net found in any of the manuscripts of Josephus which have come down to us. *Jude Epist. 14. AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION". 31 given, the general tone of the book, which in no respect recalls the writings of the captivity, but, on the con- trary, responds, by a crowd of analogies, to the beliefs, the manners, the turn of imagination of the time of the Seleucidae; the Apocalyptic form of the visions, the place of the book in the Hebrew canon, out of the serie of the prophets, the omission of Daniel in the pane gyrics of Chapter xlix. of Ecclesiasticus, in wrhich his position is all but indicated, and many other proofs which have been deduced a hundred times, do not per- mit of a doubt that the Book of Daniel was but the fruit of the great excitement produced among the Jews by the persecution of Antiochus. It is not in the old prophetical literature that we must class this book, but rather at the head of Apocalyptic literature, as the first model of a kind of composition, after which come the various Sibylline poems, the Book of Enoch, the Apoc- alypse of John, the Ascension of Isaiah, and the Fourth Book of Esdras. In the history of the origin of Christianity, the Tal- mud has hitherto been too much neglected. I think with M. Geiger, that the true notion of the circum- stances which surrounded the development of Jesus must be sought in this strange compilation, in wmich so much precious information is mixed with the most in- significant scholasticism. The Christian and the Jew- ish theology having in the main followed two parallel ways, the history of the one cannot well be understood without the history of the other. Innumerable impor- tant details in the Gospels find, moreover, their com- mentary in the Talmud. The vast Latin collections of Lightfoot, Scheettgen, Buxtorf, and Otho contained already a mass of information on this point. I have imposed on myself the task of verifying in the original 32 LIFE OF JESUS. all the citations which I have admitted, without a sin- gle exception. The assistance which has been given me for this part of my task by a learned Israelite, M. Neubauer, well versed in Talmudic literature, has enabled me to go further, and to clear up the most intricate parts of my subject by new researches. The distinction of epochs is here most important, the com- pilation of the Talmud extending from the year 200 to about the year 500. We have brought to it as much discernment as is possible in the actual state of these studies. Dates so recent will excite some fears among persons habituated to accord value to a document only for the period in which it was written. But such scruples would here be out of place. The teaching of the Jews from the Asmonean epoch down to the sec- ond century was principally oral. We must not judge of this state of intelligence by the habits of an age of much writing. The Vedas, and the ancient Arabian poems, have been preserved for ages from memory, and yet these compositions present a very distinct and delicate form. In the Talmud, on the contrary, the form has no value. Let us add that before the Mish- nah of Judas the Saint, which has caused all others to be forgotten, there were attempts at compilation, the commencement of which is probably much earlier than is commonly supposed. The style of the Talmud is that of loose notes; the collectors did no more probably than classify under certain titles the enormous mass of writings which had been accumulating in the different schools for generations. It remains for us to speak of the documents which, presenting themselves as biographies of the Founder of Christianity, must naturally hold the first place in a Life of Jesus. A complete treatise upon the compila- AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION". 33 tion of the Gospels would be a work of itself. Thanks to the excellent researches of which this question has been the object during thirty years, a problem which was formerly judged insurmountable has obtained a solution which, though it leaves room for many uncer- tainties, fully suffices for the necessities of history. We shall have occasion to return to this in our Second Book, the composition of the Gospels having been one of the most important facts for the future of Christian- ity in the second half of the first century. We will touch here only a single aspect of the subject, that which is indispensable to the completeness of our nar- rative. Leaving aside all which belongs to the por- traiture of the apostolic times, we will inquire only in what degree the data furnished by the Gospels may be employed in a history formed according to rational principles.1 That the Gospels are in part legendary, is evident, since they are full of miracles and of the supernatural ; but legends have not all the same value. No one doubts the principal features of the life of Francis d'Assisi, although wre meet the supernatural at every step. No one, on the other hand, accords credit to the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, because it was written long after the time of the hero, and purely as a romance. At what time, by what hands, under what circumstances, have the Gospels been compiled? This is the primary question upon which depends the opin- ion to be formed of their credibility. Each of the four Gospels bears at its head the name 1Persons who wish to read more ample explanations, may con- sult, in addition to the work of M. Reville, previously cited, the writings of Reuss and Scherer in the Revue de Theologie, vol. x., xi., xv. ; new series, ii„ iii., iv. ; and that of Nicolas in the Revue Germaniquc, Sept. and Dec, 1862; April and June, 1863. 34 LIFE OF JESUS. of a personage, known either in the apostolic history, or in the Gospel history itself. These four personages are not strictly given us as the authors. The formulae "according to Matthew/' "according to Mark," "ac- cording to Luke," "according to John," do not imply that, in the most ancient opinion, these recitals were written from beginning to end by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,1 they merely signify that these were the traditions proceeding from each of these apostles, and claiming their authority. It is clear that, if these titles are exact, the Gospels, without ceasing to be in part legendary, are of great value, since they enable us to go back to the half century which followed the death of Jesus, and in two instances, even to the eye-witnesses of his actions. Firstly, as to Luke, doubt is scarcely possible. The Gospel of Luke is a regular composition, founded on anterior documents.2 It is the work of a man who selects, prunes, and combines. The author of this Gospel is certainly the same as that of the Acts of the Apostles.3 Now,, the author of the Acts is a com- panion of St. Paul,4 a title which applies to Luke ex- actly.5 I know that more than one objection may be raised against this reasoning ; but one thing, at least, is beyond doubt, namely, that the author of the third Gospel and of the Acts was a man of the second apos- tolic generation, and that is sufficient for our object. The date of this Gospel can moreover be determined *In the same manner we say, "The Gospel according to the He- brews/' "The Gospel according to the Egyptians." 2Luke i. 1-4. 'Acts i. 1. Compare Luke i. 1-4. 4From xvi. 10, the author represents himself as eye-witness. 5 2 Tim. iv. 11; Philemon 24; Col. iv. 14. The name of Lucas (contraction of Lucanus) being very rare, we need not fear one of those homonyms which cause so many perplexities in questions of criticism relative to the New Testament. AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION. 35 with much precision by considerations drawn from the book itself. The twenty-first chapter of Luke, insep- arable from the rest of the work, was certainly written after the siege of Jerusalem, and but a short time after.1 We are here, then, upon solid ground ; for we are con- cerned with a work written entirely by the same hand, and of the most perfect unity. The Gospels of Matthew and Mark have not nearly the same stamp of individuality. They are impersonal compositions, in which the author totally disappears. A proper name written at the head of works of this kind does not amount to much. But if the Gospel of Luke is dated, those of Matthew and Mark are dated also ; for it is certain that the third Gospel is posterior to the first two and exhibits the character of a much more advanced compilation. We have, besides, on this point, an excellent testimony from a writer of the first half of the second century — namely, Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, a grave man, a man of traditions, who was all his life seeking to collect whatever could be known of the person of Jesus.2 After having declared that on such matters he preferred oral tradition to books, Papias mentions two writings on the acts and words of Christ : First, a writing of Mark, the interpreter of the apostle Peter, written briefly, incomplete, and not ar- ranged in chronological order, including narratives and discourses, (Xexdivra rj npaxOsvra ,) composed from the information and recollections of the apostle Peter ; second, a collection of sentences ( \6yiot ) written in 'Verses g, 20, 24, 28, 32. Comp. xxii. 36. 8In Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., iii. 39. No doubt whatever can be raised as to the authenticity of this passage. Eusebius, in fact, far from exaggerating the authority of Papias, is embarrassed at his simple ingenuousness, at his gross millenarianism, and solves the difficulty by treating him as a man of little mind. Comp. Irenseus. . lav. Hcrr., iii. 1. 36 LIFE OF JESUS. Hebrew1 by Matthew, "and which each one has trans- lated as he could." It is certain that these two descrip- tions answer pretty well to the general physiognomy of the two books now called "Gospel according to Mat- thew," ''Gospel according to Mark" — the first charac- terized by its long discourses ; the second, above all, by anecdote — much more exact than the first upon small facts, brief even to dryness, containing few discourses, and indifferently composed. That these two works, such as we now read them, are absolutely similar to those read by Papias, cannot be sustained : Firstly, be- cause the writings of Matthew were to Papias solely discourses in Hebrew, of which there were in circula- tion very varying translations; and, secondly, because the writings of Mark and Matthew were to him pro- foundly distinct, written without any knowledge of each other, and, as it seems, in different languages. Now, in the present state of the texts, the "Gospel ac- cording to Matthew" and the "Gospel according to Mark" present parallel parts so long and so perfectly identical, that it must be supposed, either that the final compiler of the first had the second under his eyes, or vice versa, or that both copied from the same prototype. That which appears the most likely, is, that we have not the entirely original compilations of either Matthew or Mark ; but that our first two Gospels are versions in which the attempt is made to fill up the gaps of the one text by the other. Every one wished, in fact, to pos- sess a complete copy. He who had in his copy only discourses, wished to have narratives, and vice versa. It is thus that "the Gospel according to Matthew" is found to have included almost all the anecdotes of Mark, and that "the Gospel according to Mark" now AThat is to say, in the Semitic dialect. AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION". 37 contains numerous features which come from the Logia of Matthew. Every one, besides, drew largely on the Gospel tradition then current. This tradition was so far from having been exhausted by the Gospels, that the Acts of the Apostles and the most ancient Fathers quote many words of Jesus which appear authentic, and are not found in the Gospels we possess. It matters little for our present object to push this delicate analysis further, and to endeavor to recon- struct in some manner, on the one hand, the original Logia of Matthew, and, on the other, the primitive nar- rative such as it left the pen of Mark. The Logia are doubtless represented by the great discourses of Jesus which fill a considerable part of the first Gospel. These discourses form, in fact, when detached from the rest, a sufficiently complete whole. As to the narratives of the first and second Gospels, they seem to have for basis a common document, of which the text reappears some- times in the one and sometimes in the other, and of which the second Gospel, such as we read it to-day, is but a slightly modified reproduction. In other words, the scheme of the Life of Jesus, in the synoptics, rests upon two original documents — first, the discourses of Jesus collected by Matthew; second, the collection of anecdotes and personal reminiscences which Mark wrote from the recollections of Peter. We may say that we have these two documents still, mixed with accounts from another source, in the two first Gospels, which bear, not without reason, the name of the "Gos- pel according to Matthew" and of the "Gospel accord- ing to Mark." What is indubitable, in any case, is, that very early the discourses of Jesus were written in the Aramean lan- guage, and very early also his remarkable actions were 38 LIFE OF JESUS. recorded. These were not texts defined and fixeH dog- matically. Besides the Gospels which have come to us, there were a number of others professing to represent the tradition of eye-witnesses.1 Little importance was attached to these writings, and the preservers, such as Papias, greatly preferred oral tradition.2 As men still believed tkat the world was nearly at an end, they cared little to compose books for the future; it was sufficient merely to preserve in their hearts a lively image of him whom they hoped soon to see again in the clouds. Hence the little authority which the Gospel texts enjoyed during one hundred and fifty years. There was no scruple in inserting additions, in vari- ously combining them, and in completing some by others. The poor man who has but one book wishes that it may contain all that is dear to his heart. These little books were lent, each one transcribed in the mar- gin of his copy the words, and the parables he found elsewhere, which touched him.3 The most beautiful thing in the world has thus proceeded from an obscure and purely popular elaboration. No compilation was of absolute value. Justin, who often appeals to that which he calls "The Memoirs of the Apostles,"4 had under his notice Gospel documents in a state very dif- ferent from that in which we possess them. At all events, he never cares to quote them textually. The Gospel quotations in the pseudo-Clementinian writings. *Lnke i. t, 2 ; Origen, Horn, in Luc. 1 init. ; St. Jerome, Comment, in Matt., prol. "Papias, in Eusebius, H. E., iii. 39. Comp. Irenseus, Adv. liar., in. ii. and iii. 8It is thus that the beautiful narrative in John viii. 1-11 has al~ ways floated, without finding a fixed place in the framework of the received Gospels. t *Ta arcouvrju nvFvitara tqjv aitocrvoXGDv, a KaAeTrcct tvayyeXia. Justin, Apol. i, 33. 66, 67; Dial, cum Tryph., 10, 100-T07. AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION". 39 of Ebionite origin, present the same character. The spirit was everything; the letter was nothing. It was when tradition became weakened, in the second half of the second~cent.ury, that the texts bearing the names of the apostles took a decisive authority and obtained the force of law. Who does not see the value of documents thus com- posed of the tender remembrances, and simple narra- tives, of the first two Christian generations, still full of the strong impression which the illustrious Founder had produced, and which seemed long to survive him ? Let us add, that the Gospels in question seem to pro- ceed from that branch of the Christian family which stood nearest to Jesus. The last work of compilation, at least of the text which bears the name of Matthew, appears to have been done in one of the countries situ- ated at the northeast of Palestine, such as Gaulonitis, Auranitis, Batanea, where many Christians took refuge at the time of the Roman war, where were found rela- tives of Jesus1 even in the second century, and where the first Galilean tendency was longer preserved than in other parts. So far we have only spoken of the three Gospels named the synoptics. There remains a fourth, that which bears the name of John. Concerning this one, doubts have a much better foundation, and the question is further from solution. Papias — who was connected with the school of John, and who, if not one of his auditors, as Irenseus thinks, associated with his imme- diate disciples, among others, Aristion, and the one called Prcsbyteros Joannes — says not a word of a Life of Jesus, written by John, although he had zealously collected the oral narratives of both Aristion and Pres* 1Juliits Africanus, in Eusebius. Hist. Eccl, i. 7. 40 LIFE OF JESUS. byteros Joannes. If any such mention had been found in his work, Eusebius, who points out every- thing therein that can contribute to the literary his- tory of the apostolic age, would doubtless have men- tioned it. The intrinsic difficulties drawn from the perusal of the fourth Gospel itself are not less strong. How is it that, side by side with narration so precise, and so evi- dently that of an eye-witness, we find discourses s< ■ totally different from those of Matthew? How is it that, connected with a general plan of the life of Jesus, which appears much more satisfactory and exact than that of the synoptics, these singular passages occur in which we are sensible of a dogmatic interest peculiar to the compiler, of ideas foreign to Jesus, and some- times of indications which place us on our guard against the good faith of the narrator? Lastly, how is it that, united with views the most pure, the most just, the most truly evangelical, we find these blemishes which we would fain regard as the interpolations of an ardent sectarian? Is it indeed John, son of Zebedee, brother of James (of whom there is not a single men- tion made in the fourth Gospel), who is able to write in Greek these lessons of abstract metaphysics to which neither the synoptics nor the Talmud offer any anal- ogy? All this is of great importance; and for myself, I dare not be sure that the fourth Gospel has been en- tirely written by the pen of a Galilean fisherman. But that, as a whole, this Gospel may have originated to-' ward the end of the first century, from the great school of Asia Minor, which was connected with John, that it represents to us a version of the life of the Master, worthy of high esteem, and often to be preferred, is demonstrated, in a manner which leaves us nothing to AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION. 41 be desired, both by exterior evidences and by examina- tion of the document itself. And, firstly, no one doubts that, toward the year 1 50, the fourth Gospel did exist, and was attributed to John. Explicit texts from St. Justin,1 from Athenagorus,2 from Tatian,3 from Theophilus of Antioch,4 from Ire- naeus,8 show that thenceforth this Gospel mixed in every controversy, and served as corner-stone for the development of the faith. Irenaeus is explicit; now, Irenseus came from the school of John, and between him and the apostle there was only Polycarp. The part played by this Gospel in Gnosticism, and especially in the system of Valentinus,6 in Montanism,7 and in the quarrel of the Quartodecimans,8 is not less decisive. The school of John was the most influential one during the second century ; and it is only by regarding the ori- gin of the Gospel as coincident with the rise of the school, that the existence of the latter can be under- stood at all. Let us add that the first epistle attributed to St. John is certainly by the same author as the fourth Gospel ;9 now, this epistle is recognized as from John by Polycarp,10 Papias,11 and Irenseus.12 But it is, above all, the perusal of the work itself which is calculated to give this impression. The au- xApol, i. 32,61; Dial, cum Try ph., 88. 'Legatio pro Christ, 10. 'Adv. GrcEc, 5, 7; Cf. Eusebius, H. E„ iv. 29 : Theodoret, Hceretic- Fabul., i. 20. Ad Autolycutn, ii. 22. *Adv. Hcer., 11. xxii. 5, ni. 1. Cf. Eus., H. E., v. 8. "Iremeus, Adv. Hcer., 1. Hi., 6; in., xi. 7; St. Hippolytus, Philo- sophumena vi., ii., 29, and following. TIrenseus, Adv. Hcrr., in. xi, 9. "Eusebius, Hist, Eccl., v. 24. 9 1 John, i, 3, 5. The two writings present the most complete identity of style, the same peculiarities, the same favorite expres- sions, wEpist. ad Philipp., 7. 11 Tn Eusebius. Hist. Eccl., in. 39. uAdv. H<*r.; m. xvi. 5, 8; Cf. Eusebius, Hist. EccU v. & 42 LIFE OF JESUS. thor always speaks as an eye-witness ; he wishes to pass for the apostle John. If, then, this work is not really by the apostle, we must admit a fraud of which the au- thor convicts himself. Now, although the ideas of the time respecting literary honesty differed essentially from ours, there is no example in the apostolic world of a falsehood of this kind. Besides, not only does the author wish to pass for the apostle John, but we see clearly that he writes in the interest of this apostle. On each page he betrays the desire to fortify his authority, to show that he has been the favorite of Jesus;1 that in all the solemn circumstances (at the Lord's supper, at Calvary, at the tomb) he held the first place. His relations on the whole fraternal, although not excluding a certain rivalry with Peter;2 his hatred, on the contrary, of Judas,3 a hatred probably anterior to the betrayal, seems to pierce through here and there. We are tempted to believe that John, in his old age, having read the Gospel narratives, on the one hand, remarked their various inaccuracies,4 on the other, was hurt at seeing that there was not accorded to him a sufficiently high place in the history of Christ ; that then he commenced to dictate a number of things which he knew better than the rest, with the intention of showing that in many instances, in which only Peter was spoken of, he had figured with him and even before him.5 Already during the life of Jesus, these trifling 1John xiii. 23, xix. 26, xx. 2, xxi. 7, 20. 2John xviii. 15-16, xx. 2-6, xxi. 15-19. Comp. i, 35, 40, 41. 'John vi. 65, xii. 6, xiii. 21, and following. 4The manner in which Aristion and Presbyteros Joannes ex- pressed themselves on the Gospel of Mark before Papias (Euse- bius, H. E., in. 39) implies, in effect; a friendly criticism^ or, more properly, a sort of excuse, indicating that John's disciples had better information on the same subject. 5Compare John xviii. 15, and following, with Matthew xxvi. 58; John xx, 2 to 6, with Mark xvi. 7. See also John xiii. 24, 25. AUTHOK'S INTRODUCTION'. 43 sentiments of jealousy had been manifested between the sons of Zebedee and the other disciples. After the death of James, his brother, John remained sole in- heritor of the intimate remembrances of which these two apostles, by the common consent, were the deposi- taries. Hence his perpetual desire to recall that he is the last surviving eye-witness,1 and the pleasure which he takes in relating circumstances which he alone could know. Hence, too, so many minute details which seem like the commentaries of an annotator — "it was the sixth hour;" "it was night;" "the servant's name was Malchus;" "they had made a fire of coals, for it was cold;" "the coat was without seam." Hence, lastly, the disorder of the compilation, the irregularity of the narration, the disjointedness of the first chap- ters, all so many inexplicable features on the supposi- tion that this Gospel was but a theological thesis, with- out historic value, and which, on the contrary, are per- fectly intelligible, if, in conformity with tradition, we see in them the remembrances of an old man, some- times of remarkable freshness, sometimes having undergone strange modifications. A primary distinction, indeed, ought to be made in the Gospel of John. On the one side, this Gospel pre- sents us with a rough draft of the life of Jesus, which differs considerably from that of the synoptics. On the other, it puts into the mouth of Jesus discourses of which the tone, the style, the treatment, and the doc- trines have nothing in common with the Logia given us by the synoptics. In this second respect, the differ- ence is such that we must make choice in a decisive manner. If Jesus spoke as Matthew represents, he 1Chap. i. 14, xix. 35, xxi, 24, and following. Compare the First Epistle of St. John, chap. i. 3, 5. 44 LIFE OF JESUS. could not have spoken as John relates. Between these two authorities no critic has ever hesitated, or can ever hesitate. Far removed from the simple, disinterested, impersonal tone of the synoptics, the Gospel of John shows incessantly the pre-occupation of the apologist — the mental reservation of the sectarian, the desire to prove a thesis, and to convince adversaries.1 It was not by pretentious tirades, heavy, badly written, and appealing little to the moral sense, that Jesus founded his divine work. If even Papias had not taught us that Matthew wrote the sayings of Jesus in their origi- nal tongue, the natural, ineffable truth, the charm be- yond comparison of the discourses in the synoptics, their profoundly Hebraistic idiom, the analogies which they present with the sayings of the Jewish doctors of the period, their perfect harmony with the natural phe- nomena of Galilee — all these characteristics, compared with the obscure Gnosticism, with the distorted meta- physics, which fill the discourses of John, would speak loudly enough. This by no means implies that there are not in the discourses of John some admirable gleams, some traits which truly come from Jesus.2 But the mystic tone of these discourses does not corre- spond at all to the character of the eloquence of Jesus, such as we picture it according to the synoptics. A new spirit has breathed; Gnosticism has already com- menced; the Galilean era of the kingdom of God is finished; the hope of the near advent of Christ is more 1See, for example, chaps, ix. and xi. Notice especially, the ef- fect which such passages as John xix. 35. xx. 31, xxi. 20-23, 24, 25, produce, when we recall the absence of all comments which distin- guishes the synoptics. 'For example, chap. iv. 1, and following, xv. 12, and following. Many words remembered by John are found in the synoptics (chap. xii. 16, xv. 20). "AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION. 45 distant; we enter on the barrenness of metaphysics, into the darkness of abstract dogma. The spirit of Jesus is not there, and, if the son of Zebedee has truly traced these pages, he had certainly, in writing them, quite forgotten the Lake of Gennesareth, and the charming discourses which he had heard upon its shores. One circumstance, moreover, which strongly proves that the discourses given us by the fourth Gospel are not historical, but compositions intended to cover with the authority of Jesus certain doctrines dear to the compiler, is their perfect harmony with the intellectual state of Asia Minor at the time when they were writ- ten. Asia Minor wras then the theatre of a strange movement of syncretical philosophy; all the germs of Gnosticism existed there already. John appears to have drunk deeply from these strange springs. It may be that, after the crisis of the year 68 (the date of the Apocalypse) and of the year 70 (the destruction of Jerusalem), the old apostle, with an ardent and plastic spirit, disabused of the belief in a near appearance of the Son of Man in the clouds, may have inclined to- ward the ideas that he found around him, of which several agreed sufficiently well with certain Christian doctrines. In attributing these new ideas to Jesus, he only followed a very natural tendency. Our remem- brances are transformed with our circumstances; the ideal of a person that we have known changes as we change.1 Considering Jesus as the incarnation of truth, John could not fail to attribute to him that which he had come to consider as the truth. :It was thus that Napoleon became a liberal in the remembrances of his companions in exile, when these, after their return, found themselves thrown in the midst of the political society of the time. 46 LIFE OF JESUS. If we must speak candidly, we will add that prob- ably John himself had little share in this; that the change was made around him rather than by him. One is sometimes tempted to believe that precious notes, coming from the apostle, have been employed by his disciples in a very different sense from the primitive Gospel spirit. In fact, certain portions of the fourth Gospel have been added later; such is the entire twenty-first chapter,1 in which the author seems to wish to render homage to the apostle Peter after his death, and to reply to the objections which would be drawn, or already had been drawn, from the death of John himself, (ver. 21-23.) Many other places bear the trace of erasures and corrections.2 It is impossible at this distance to understand these singular problems, and without doubt many surprises would be in store for us, if we were permitted to penetrate the secrets of that mysterious school of Ephesus, which, more than once, appears to have delighted in obscure paths. But there is a decisive test. Every one who sets himself to write the Life of Jesus without any predetermined the- ory as to the relative value of the Gospels, letting him- self be guided solely by the sentiment of the subject, will be led in numerous instances to prefer the narra- tion of John to that of the synoptics. The last months of the life of Jesus especially are explained by John alone; a number of the features of the passion, unin- telligible in the synoptics,3 resume both probability and possibility in the narrative of the fourth Gospel. On the contrary, I dare defy any one to compose a Life of ^he verses, chap. xx. 30, 31, evidently form the original con- clusion. 2Chap. vi. 2, 22, vii. 22. 8For example, that which concerns the announcement of the betrayal by Judas. AUTHORS INTRODUCTION. 47 Jesus with any meaning, from the discourses which John attributes to him. This manner of incessantly preaching and demonstrating himself, this perpetual argumentation, this stage-effect devoid of simplicity, these long arguments after each miracle, these stiff and awkward discourses, the tone of which is so often false and unequal,1 would not be tolerated by a man of taste compared with the delightful sentences of the synop- tics. There are here evidently artificial portions,2 which represent to us the sermons of Jesus, as the dialogues of Plato render us the conversations of Socrates. They are, so to speak, the variations of a musician improvising on a given theme. The theme is not without some authenticity; but in the execution, the imagination of the artist has given itself full scope. We are sensible of the factitious mode of procedure, of rhetoric, of gloss.3 Let us add that the vocabulary of Jesus cannot be recognized in the portions of which we speak. The expression, "kingdom of God," which was so familiar to the Master,4 occurs there but once.5 On the other hand, the style of the discourses attributed to Jesus by the fourth Gospel, presents the most com- plete analogy with that of the Epistles of St. John ; we see that in writing the discourses, the author followed not his recollections, but rather the somewhat mon- otonous movement of his own thought. Quite a new mystical language is introduced, a language of which the synoptics had not the least idea ("world/' "truth," "life," "light," "darkness," etc.). If Jesus had ever 1 See, for example, chaps, ii. 25, iii. 32, 33, and the long disputes of chapters vii., viii., and ix. 2 We feel often that the author seeks pretexts for introducing certain discourses (chaps, iii., v., viii., xiii., and following). 3 For example, chap. xvii. 4 Besides the synoptics, the Acts, the Epistles of St. Paul, and the Apocalypse, confirm it. 6John iii. 3, 5. 48 LIFE OF JESUS. spoken in this style, which has nothing of Hebrew, nothing Jewish, nothing Talmudic in it, how, if I may thus express myself, is it that but a single one of his hearers should have so well kept the secret ? Literary history offers, besides, another example, which presents the greatest analogy with the historic phenomenon we have just described, and serves to ex- plain it. Socrates, who, like Jesus, never wrote, is known to us by. two of his disciples, Xenophon and Plato; the first corresponding to the synoptics in his clear, transparent, impersonal compilation; the second recalling the author of the fourth Gospel, by his vigor- ous individuality. In order to describe the Socratic teaching, should we follow the ''dialogues" of Plato, or the "discourses" of Xenophon? Doubt, in this re- spect, is not possible; every one chooses the "dis- courses," and not the "dialogues." Does Plato, how- ever, teach us nothing about Socrates? Would it be good criticism, in writing the biography of the latter, to neglect the "dialogues"? Who would venture to maintain this? The analogy, moreover, is not com- plete, and the difference is in favor of the fourth Gos- pel The author of this Gospel is, in fact, the better biographer; as if Plato, who, whilst attributing to his master fictitious discourses, had known important mat- ters about his life, which Xenophon ignored entirely. Without pronouncing upon the material question as to what hand has written the fourth Gospel, and whilst inclined to believe that the discourses, at least, are not from the son of Zebedee, we admit still, that it is in- deed "the Gospel according to John," in the same sense that the first and second Gospels are the Gospels "ac- cording to Matthew," and "according to Mark." The historical sketch of the fourth Gospel is the Life of AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION. 49 Jesus^ such as it was known in the school of John ; it is the recital which Aristion and Presbyteros Joannes made to Papias, without telling him that it was writ- ten, or rather attaching no importance to this point. I must add, that, in my opinion, this school was better acquainted with the exterior circumstances of the life of the Founder than the group whose remembrances constituted the synoptics. It had, especially upon the sojourns of Jesus at Jerusalem, data which the others did not possess. The disciples of this school treated Mark as an indifferent biographer, and devised a sys- tem to explain his omissions.1 Certain passages of Luke, where there is, as it were, an echo of the tradi- tions of John,2 prove also that these traditions were not entirely unknown to the rest of the Christian family. These explanations will suffice, I think, to show, in the course of my narrative, the motives which have de- termined me to give the preference to this or that of the four guides whom we have for the Life of Jesus. On the whole, I admit as authentic the four canonical Gospels. All, in my opinion, date from the first cen- tury, and the authors are, generally speaking, those to whom they are attributed; but their historic value is very diverse. Matthew evidently merits an unlimited confidence as to the discourses ; they are the Logia, the identical notes taken from a clear and lively remem- 1 Papias, he. cit. 2For example, the pardon of the adulteress ; the knowledge which Luke has of the family of Bethany; his type of the character of Martha responding to the Sirjxovei of John (chap. xii. 2) : the incident of the woman who wiped the feet of Jesus with her hair ; an obscure notion of the travels of Jesus to Jerusalem ; the idea that in his passion he was seen by three witnesses ; the opinion of the author that some disciples were present at the crucifixion ; the knowledge which he has of the part played by Annas in aiding Caiaphas ; the appearance of the angel in the agony (comp. John *ii. 38, 29). 50 LIFE OP JESUS. brance of the teachings of Jesus. A kind of splendor at once mild and terrible — a divine strength, if we may so speak, emphasizes these words, detaches them from the context, and renders them easily distinguishable. The person who imposes upon himself the task of mak- ing a continuous narrative from the gospel history, possesses, in this respect, an excellent touchstone. The real words of Jesus disclose themselves ; as soon as we touch them in this chaos of traditions of varied authen- ticity, we feel them vibrate; they betray themselves spontaneously, and shine out of the narrative with un- equaled brilliancy. The narrative portions grouped in the first Gospel around this primitive nucleus have not the same au- thority. There are many not well defined legends which have proceeded from the zeal of the second Christian generation.1 The Gospel of Mark is much firmer, more precise, containing fewer subsequent addi- tions. He is the one of the three synoptics who has remained the most primitive, the most original, the one to whom the fewest after-elements have been added. In Mark, the facts are related with a clearness for which we seek in vain amongst the other evan- gelists. He likes to report certain words of Jesus in Syro-Chaldean.2 He is full of minute observations, coming doubtless from an eye-witness. There is noth- ing to prevent our agreeing with Papias in regarding this eye-witness, who evidently had followed Jesus, who had loved him and observed him very closely, and who had preserved a lively image of him, as the apostle Peter himself. ^haps. i., ii., especially. See also chap, xxvii. 3, 19, 51, 53, 6o, xxviii. 2, and following, in comparing Mark. 2Cbap. v. 41, vii. 34, xv. 34. Matthew only presents this pecm- liarity once (chap, xxvii. 46). AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION. 51 As to the work of Luke, its historical value is sen- sibly weaker. It is a document which comes to us second-hand. The narrative is more mature. The words of Jesus are there, more deliberate, more senten- tious. Some sentences are distorted and exaggerated.1 Writing outside of Palestine, and certainly after the siege of Jerusalem,2 the author indicates the places with less exactitude than the other two synoptics; he has an erroneous idea of the temple, which he repre- sents as an oratory where people went to pay their devotions.3 He subdues some details in order to make the different narratives agree ;4 he softens the passages which had become embarrassing on account of a more exalted idea of the divinity of Christ ;5 he exaggerates the marvellous ;6 commits errors in chronology f omits Hebraistic comments ;8 quotes no word of Jesus in this language, and gives to all the localities their Greek names. We feel we have to do with a compiler — with a man who has not himself seen the witnesses, but who labors at the texts and wrests their sense to make them agree. Luke had probably under his eyes the bio- graphical collection of Mark, and the Logia of Mat- thew. But he treats them with much freedom ; some- times he fuses two anecdotes or two parables in one ;9 sometimes he divides one in order to make two.10 He 1Chap. xiv. 26. The rules of the apostolate (chap, x.) have there a peculiar character of exaltation. 2Chap. xix. 41, 43, 44, xxi. 9, 20, xxiii. 29. sChap. ii. 37, xviii. 10, and following, xxiv. 53. *For example, chap. iv. 16. 5 Chap. iii. 23. He omits Matt. xxiv. 36. 6Chap. iv. 14, xxii. 43, 44. 7 For example, in that which concerns Quirinius, Lysanias, Theudas. 8 Compare Luke i. 31 with Matt. i. 21. 9For example, chap. xix. 12-27. l0Thus, of the repast at Bethany he gives two narratives, chap, vn. 36-48, and x. 38-42. 52 LIFE OF JESUS. interprets the documents according to his own idea ; he has not the absolute impassibility of Matthew and Mark. We might affirm certain things of his indi- vidual tastes and tendencies; he is a very exact devo- tee j1 he insists that Jesus had performed all the Jewish rites,2 he is a warm Ebionite and democrat, that is to say, much opposed to property, and persuaded that the triumph of the poor is approaching;3 he likes espe- cially all the anecdotes showing prominently the con- version of sinners — the exaltation of the humble;4 he often modifies the ancient traditions in order to give them this meaning;5 he admits into his first pages the legends about the infancy of Jesus, related with the long amplifications, the spiritual songs, and the con- ventional proceedings which form the essential features of the Apocryphal Gospels. Finally, he has in the narrative of the last hours of Jesus some circumstances full of tender feeling, and certain words of Jesus of delightful beauty,6 which are not found in more au- thentic accounts, and in which we detect the presence of legend. Luke probably borrowed them from a more recent collection, in which the principal aim was to excite sentiments of piety. A great reserve was naturally enforced in presence 1Chap. xxiii. 56. 2Chap. ii. 21, 22, 39, 41, 42. This is an Ebionitish feature. Cf. Philosophumcna vn. vi. 34. 8 The parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Compare chap. vi. 20, and following, 24, and following, xii. 13, and following, xvi. entirely, xxii. 35. Acts ii. 44, 45, v. I, and following. * The woman who anoints his feet, Zaccheus, the penitent thief, the parable of the Pharisee and the publican, and the prodigal son. 6 For example, Mary of Bethany is represented by him as a sin- ner who becomes converted. 6Jesus weeping over Jerusalem, the bloody sweat, the meeting of fhe holy women, the penitent thief, &c. The speech to the women of Jerusalem (xxiii. 28, 29) could scarcely have been con- ceived except after the siege of the year 70. AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION. 53 of a document of this nature. It would have been as uncritical to neglect it as to employ it without discern- ment. Luke has had under his eyes originals which we no longer possess. He is less an evangelist than a biographer of Jesus, a "harmonizer," a corrector after the manner of Marcion and Tatian. But he is a biog- rapher of the first century, a divine artist, who, inde- pendently of the information which he has drawn from more ancient sources, shows us the character of the Founder with a happiness of treatment, with a uniform inspiration, and a distinctness which the other two synoptics do not possess. In the perusal of his Gospel there is the greatest charm; for to the incomparable beauty of the foundation, common to them all, he adds a degree of skill in composition which singularly aug- ments the effect of the portrait, without seriously in- juring its truthfulness. On the whole, we may say that the synoptical compi- lation has passed through three stages : First, the origi- nal documentary state ( Xoyia) of Matthew, XsxOsvra rj TrpaxOivra of Mark), primary compilations which no longer exist ; second, the state of simple mixture, in which the original documents are amalgamated with- out any effort at composition, without there appearing any personal bias of the authors (the existing Gospels of Matthew and Mark) ; third, the state of combination or of intentional and deliberate compiling, in which we are sensible of an attempt to reconcile the different versions (Gospel of Luke). The Gospel of John, as we have said, forms a composition of another order, and is entirely distinct. It will be remarked that I have made no use of the Apocryphal Gospels. These compositions ought not in any manner to be put upon the same footing as the 54 LIFE OF JESUS, canonical Gospels. They are insipid and puerile am- plifications, having the canonical Gospels for their basis, and adding nothing thereto of any value. On the other hand, I have been very attentive to collect the shreds preserved by the Fathers of the Church, of the ancient Gospels which formerly existed parallel with the canonical Gospels, and which are now lost — such as the Gospel according to the Hebrews, the Gospel xcording to the Egyptians, the Gospels styled those of Justin, Marcion, and Tatian. The first two are prin- cipally important because they were written in Ara^ mean, like the Logia of Matthew, and appear to con- stitute one version of the Gospel of this apostle, and because they were the Gospel of the Ebiordm — that is, of those small Christian sects of Batanea who pre- served the use of Syro-Chaldean, and who appear in some respects to have followed the course marked out by Jesus. But it must be confessed that in the state in which they have come to us, these Gospels are in- ferior, as critical authorities, to the compilation of Matthew's Gospel which we now possess. It will now be seen, I think, what kind of historical value I attribute to the Gospels. They are neither biographies after the manner of Suetonius, nor ficti- tious legends in the style of Philostratus ; they are legendary biographies. I should willingly compare them with the Legends of the Saints, the Lives of Plo- tinus, Proclus, Isidore, and other writings of the same kind, in which historical truth and the desire to present models of virtue are combined in various degrees. Inexactitude, which is one of the features of all popular compositions, is there particularly felt. Let us sup- pose that ten or twelve years ago three or four old soldiers of the Empire had each undertaken to write AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION. 55 the life of Napoleon from memory. It is clear that their narratives would contain numerous errors, and great discordances. One of them would place Wagram before Marengo ; another would write without hesita- tion that Napoleon drove the government of Robes- pierre from the Tuileries; a third would omit expedi- tions of the highest importance. But one thing would certainly result with a great degree of truthfulness from these simple recitals, and that is the character of the hero, the impression which he made around him. In this sense such popular narratives would be worth more than a formal and official history. We may say as much of the Gospels. Solely attentive to bring out strongly the excellency of the Master, his miracles, his teaching, the evangelists display entire indifference to everything that is not of the very spirit of Jesus. The contradictions respecting time, place, and persons were regarded as insignificant ; for the higher the degree of inspiration attributed to the words of Jesus, the less was granted to the compilers themselves. The latter regarded themselves as simple scribes, and cared but for one thing — to omit nothing they knew.1 Unquestionably certain preconceived ideas associ- ated themselves with such recollections. Several nar- ratives, especially in Luke, are invented in order to bring out more vividly certain traits of the character of Jesus. This character itself constantly underwent alteration. Jesus would be a phenomenon unparalleled in history if, with the part which he played, he had not early become idealized. The legends respecting Alex- ander were invented before the generation of his com- panions in arms became extinct; those respecting St. Francis d'Assisi began in his lifetime. A rapid meta- *See the passage from Papias, before cited. 56 LIFE OF JESUS. morphosis operated in the same manner in the twenty or thirty years which followed the death of Jesus, and imposed upon his biography the peculiarities of an ideal legend. Death adds perfection to the most per- fect man; it frees him from all defect in the eyes of those who have loved him. With the wish to paint the Master, there was also the desire to explain him. Many anecdotes were conceived to prove that in him the prophecies regarded as Messianic had had their ac- complishment. But this procedure, of which we must not deny the importance, would not suffice to explain everything. No Jewish work of the time gives a series of prophecies exactly declaring what the Messiah should accomplish. Many Messianic allusions quoted by the evangelists are so subtle, so indirect, that one cannot believe they all responded to a generally admit- ted doctrine. Sometimes they reasoned thus : "The Messiah ought to do such a thing; now Jesus is the Messiah; therefore Jesus has done such a thing." At other times, by an inverse process, it was said : "Such a thing has happened to Jesus ; now Jesus is the Mes- siah ; therefore such a thing was to happen to the Mes- siah/'1 Too simple explanations are always false when analyzing those profound creations of popular sentiment which baffle all systems by their fullness and infinite variety. It is scarcely necessary to say that, with such documents, in order to present only what is indisputable, we must limit ourselves to general fea- tures. In almost all ancient histories, even in those which are much less legendary than these, details open up innumerable doubts. When we have two accounts of the same fact, it is extremely rare that the two accounts agree. Is not this a reason for anticipating *See, for example, John xix. 23-24. AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION. 57 many difficulties when we have but one ? We may say that amongst the anecdotes, the discourses, the cele- brated sayings which have been given us by the his- torians, there is not one strictly authentic. Were there stenographers to fix these fleeting words ? Was there an analyst always present to note the gestures, the manners, the sentiments of the actors? Let any one endeavor to get at the truth as to the way in which such or such contemporary fact has happened; he will not succeed. Two accounts of the same event given by different eye-witnesses differ essentially. Must we, therefore, reject all the coloring of the narratives, and limit ourselves to the bare facts only ? That would be to suppress history. Certainly, I think that if we ex- \ cept certain short and almost mnemonic axioms, none ] of the discourses reported by Matthew are textual; I even our stenographic reports are scarcely so. I freely admit that the admirable account of the Passion con- tains many trifling inaccuracies. Would it, however, be writing the history of Jesus to omit those sermons which give to us in such a vivid manner the character of his discourses, and to limit ourselves to saying, with Josephus and Tacitus, "that he was put to death by the ^ order of Pilate at the instigation of the priests" ? That / would be, in my opinion, a kind of inexactitude worse than that to which we are exposed in admitting the details supplied by the texts. These details are not true to the letter, but they are true with a superior truth, they are more true than the naked truth, in the sense that they are truth rendered expressive and ar- ticulate— -truth idealized. I beg those who think that I have placed an exag- gerated confidence in narratives in great part legen- dary, to take note of the observation I have just made. 58 LIFE OF JESUS. To what would the life of Alexander be reduced if it were confined to that which is materially certain? Even partly erroneous traditions contain a portion of truth which history cannot neglect. No one has blamed M. Sprenger for having, in writing the life of Mahomet, made much of the hadith or oral traditions concerning the prophet, and for often having attributed to his hero words which are only known through this source. Yet the traditions respecting Mahomet are not superior in historical value to the discourses and narratives which compose the Gospels. They were written between the year 50 and the year 140 of the Hegira. When the history of the Jewish schools in the ages which immediately preceded and followed the birth of Christianity shall be written, no one will make any scruple of attributing to Hillel, Shammai, Gamaliel the maxims ascribed to them by the Mishnah and the Gemara, although these great compilations were writ- ten many hundreds of years after the time of the doc- tors in question. As to those who believe, on the contrary, that history should consist of a simple reproduction of the docu- ments which have come down to us, I beg to observe that such a course is not allowable. The four principal documents are in flagrant contradiction one with an- other. Josephus rectifies them sometimes. It is nec- essary to make a selection. To assert that an event cannot take place in two ways at once, or in an impos- sible manner, is not to impose an a priori philosophy upon history. The historian ought not to conclude that a fact is fake because he possesses several versions of it, or because credulity has mixed with them much that is fabulous. He ought in such a case to be very cautious — to examine the texts, and to proceed care- AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION. 59 fully by induction. There is one class of narratives especially, to which this principle must necessarily be applied. Such are narratives of supernatural events. To seek to explain these, or to reduce them to legends, is not to mutilate facts in the name of theory; it is to make the observation of facts our groundwork. None of the miracles with which the old histories are filled took place under scientific conditions. Observation, which has never once been falsified, teaches us that miracles never happen but in times and countries in which they are believed, and before persons disposed to believe them. No miracle ever occurred in the pres- ence of men capable of testing its miraculous character. Neither common people nor men of the world are able to do this. It requires great precautions and long habits of scientific research. In our days have we not seen almost all respectable people dupes of the grossest frauds or of puerile illusions? Marvellous facts, at- tested by the whole population of small towns, have, thanks to a severer scrutiny, been exploded.1 If it is proved that no contemporary miracle will bear inquiry, is it not probable that the miracles of the past, which have all been performed in popular gatherings, would equally present their share of illusion, if it were pos- sible to criticise them in detail ? It is not, then, in the name of this or that philosophy, but in the name of universal experience, that we banish miracle from history. We do not say, "Miracles are impossible." We say, "Up to this time a miracle has never been proved." If to-morrow a thaumaturgus present himself with credentials sufficiently important to be discussed, and announce himself as able, say, to JSee the Gazette des Tribunaux, ioth Sept. and nth Nov., 185 1, 28th May, 1857. 00 LIFE OF JESUS. raise the dead, what would be done? A commission, composed of physiologists, physicists, chemists, per- sons accustomed to historical criticism, would be named. This commission would choose a corpse, would assure itself that the death was real, would select the room in which the experiment should be made, would arrange the whole system of precautions, so as to leave no chance of doubt. If, under such con- ditions, the resurrection were effected, a probability almost equal to certainty would be established. As, however, it ought to be possible always to repeat an ex- periment— to do over again what has been done once ; and as, in the order of miracle, there can be no question of ease or difficulty, the thaumaturgus would be invited to reproduce his marvellous act under other circum- stances, upon other corpses, in another place. If the miracle succeeded each time, two things would be proved: First, that supernatural events happen in the (world; second, that the power of producing them be- longs, or is delegated to, certain persons. But who does not see that no miracle ever took place under these conditions ? but that always hitherto the thaumaturgus has chosen the subject of the experiment, chosen the spot, chosen the public ; that, besides, the people them- selves— most commonly in consequence of the invin- cible want to see something divine in great events and great men— create the marvellous legends afterward? Until a new order of things prevails, we shall maintain then this principle of historical criticism — that a super- natural account cannot be admitted as such, that it always implies credulity or imposture, that the duty of the historian is to explain it, and seek to ascertain what share of truth or of error it may conceal. Such are the rules which have been followed in the AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION. 61 composition of this work. To the perusal of docu- mentary evidences I have been able to add an important source of information — the sight of the places where the events occurred. The scientific mission, having for its object the exploration of ancient Phoenicia, which I directed in i860 and 1861,1 led me to reside on the frontiers of Galilee and to travel there frequently. I have traversed, in all directions, the country of the Gospels ; I have visited Jerusalem, Hebron, and Sama- ria; scarcely any important locality of the history of Jesus has escaped me. All this history, which at a dis- tance seems to float in the clouds of an unreal world, thus took a form, a solidity, which astonished me. The striking agreement of the texts with the places, the marvellous harmony of the Gospel ideal with the coun- try which served it as a framework, were like a revela- tion to me. I had before my eyes a fifth Gospel, torn, but still legible, and henceforward, through the recitals of Matthew and Mark, in place of an abstract being, whose existence might have been doubted, I saw living and moving an admirable human figure. During the summer, having to go up to Ghazir, in Lebanon, to take a little repose, I fixed, in rapid sketches, the image which had appeared to me, and from them resulted this history. When a cruel bereavement hastened my de- parture, I had but a few pages to write. In this man- ner the book has been composed almost entirely near the very places where Jesus was born, and where his character was developed. Since my return, I have labored unceasingly to verify and check in detail the rough sketch which I had written in haste in a Maro- nite cabin, with five or six volumes around me. JThe work which will contain the results of this mission is in the press. 32 LIFE OP JESUS. Many will regret, perhaps, the biographical form which my work has thus taken. When I first con- ceived the idea of a history of the origin of Christian- ity, what I wished to write was, in fact, a history of doctrines, in which men and their actions would have hardly had a place. Jesus would scarcely have been named; I should have endeavored to show how the ideas which have grown under his name took root and covered the world. But I have learned since that his- tory is not a simple game of abstractions ; that men are more than doctrines. It was not a certain theory on justification and redemption which brought about the Reformation; it was Luther and Calvin. Parseeism, Hellenism, Judaism might have been able to have com- bined under every form ; the doctrines of the Resurrec- tion and of the Word might have developed themselves during ages without producing this grand, unique, and fruitful fact, called Christianity. This fact is the work of Jesus, of St. Paul, of St. John. To write the his- tory of Jesus, of St. Paul, of St. John is to write the history of the origin of Christianity. The anterior movements belong to our subject only in so far as they serve to throw light upon these extraordinary men, who naturally could not have existed without connec- tion with that which preceded them. In such an effort to make the great souls of the past live again, some share of divination and conjecture must be permitted. A great life is an organic whole which cannot be rendered by the simple agglomeration of small facts. It requires a profound sentiment to embrace them all, moulding them into perfect unity. The method of art in a similar subject is a good guide; the exquisite tact of a Goethe would know how to apply it. The essential condition of the creations of art is, AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION. 63 that they shall form a living system of which all the parts are mutually dependent and related. In histories such as this, the great test that we have got the truth is, to have succeeded in combining the texts in such a manner that they shall constitute a logi- cal, probable narrative, harmonious throughout. The secret laws of life, of the progression of organic pro- ducts, of the melting of minute distinctions, ought to be consulted at each moment; for what is required to be reproduced is not the material circumstance, which it is impossible to verify, but the very soul of history ; what must be sought is not the petty certainty about trifles, it is the correctness of the general sentiment, the truthfulness of the coloring. Each trait which departs from the rules of classic narration ought to warn us to be careful ; for the fact which has to be re- lated has been living, natural, and harmonious. If we do not succeed in rendering it such by the recital, it is surely because we have not succeeded in seeing it aright. Suppose that, in restoring the Minerva of Phidias according to the texts, we produced a dry, jar- ring, artificial wThole; what must we conclude? Sim- ply that the texts want an appreciative interpretation ; that we must study them quietly until they dovetail and furnish a whole in which all the parts are happily blended. Should we then be sure of having a perfect reproduction of the Greek statue ? No ; but at least we should not have the caricature of it ; we should have the general spirit of the work — one of the forms in which it could have existed. This idea of a living organism we have not hesitated to take as our guide in the general arrangement of the narrative. The perusal of the Gospels would suffice to prove that the compilers^ although having a very 64 LIFE OF JESUS. true plan of the Life of Jesus in their minds, have not been guided by very exact chronological data ; Papias, besides, expressly teaches this.1 The expressions : "At this time . . . after that . . . then . . and it came to pass . . .," etc., are the simple transitions intended to connect different narratives with each other. To leave all the information furnished by the Gospels in the disorder in which tradition supplies it, would only be to write the history of Jesus as the history of a cele- brated man would be written, by giving pell-mell the letters and anecdotes of his youth, his old age, and of his maturity. The Koran, which presents to us, in the loosest manner, fragments of the different epochs in the life of Mahomet, has yielded its secret to an in- genious criticism ; the chronological order in which the fragments were composed has been discovered so as to leave little room for doubt. Such a rearrangement is much more difficult in the case of the Gospels, the public life of Jesus having been shorter and less event- ful than the life of the founder of Islamism. Mean- while, the attempt to find a guiding thread through this labyrinth ought not to be taxed with gratuitous sub- tlety. There is no great abuse of hypothesis in suppos- ing that a founder of a new religion commences by at- taching himself to the moral aphorisms already in cir- culation in his time, and to the practices which are in vogue ; that, when riper, and in full possession of his idea, he delights in a kind of calm and poetical elo- quence, remote from all controversy, sweet and free as pure feeling; that he warms by degrees, becomes ani- mated by opposition, and finishes by polemics and strong invectives. Such are the periods which may plainly be distinguished in the Koran. The order xLoc. tit. AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION'. 65 adopted with an extremely fine tact by the synoptics, supposes an analogous progress. If Matthew be at- tentively read, we shall find in the distribution of the discourses, a gradation perfectly analogous to that which we have just indicated. The reserved turns of expression of which we make use in unfolding the pro- gress of the ideas of Jesus will also be observed. The reader may, if he likes, see in the divisions adopted in doing this, only the indispensable breaks for the me- thodical exposition of a profound, complicated thought. If the love of a subject can help one to understand it, it will also, I hope, be recognized that I have not been wanting in this condition. To write the history of a religion, it is necessary, firstly, to have believed it (otherwise we should not be able to understand how it has charmed and satisfied the human conscience) ; in the second place, to believe it no longer in an absolute manner, for absolute faith is incompatible with sincere history. But love is possible without faith. To abstain from attaching one's self to any of the forms which captivate the adoration of men, is not to deprive ourselves of the enjoyment of that which is good and beautiful in them. No transitory appearance exhausts the Divinity ; God was revealed before Jesus — God will reveal Himself after him. Profoundly unequal, and so much the more Divine, as they are grander and more spontaneous, the manifestations of God hidden in the depths of the human conscience are all of the same order. Jesus cannot belong solely to those who call themselves his disciples. He is the common honor of all who share a common humanity. His glory does not consist in being relegated out of history; we render him a truer worship in showing that all history is in- comprehensible without him. 69 LIFE OF JESUS CHAPTER I. PLACE OF JESUS IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD. The great event of the History of the world is the revolution by which the noblest portions of humanity have passed from the ancient religions, comprised under the vague name of Paganism, to a religion founded on the Divine Unity, the Trinity, and the In- carnation of the Son of God. It has taken nearly a thousand years to accomplish this conversion. The new religion had itself taken at least three hundred years in its formation. But the origin of the revolu- tion in question with which we have to do is a fact which took place under the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. At that time there lived a superior person- age, who, by his bold originality, and by the love which he was able to inspire, became the object and fixed the starting-point of the future faith of humanity. As soon as man became distinguished from the ani- mal, he became religious; that is to say, he saw in Nature something beyond the phenomena, and for him- self something beyond death. This sentiment, during some thousands of years, became corrupted in the strangest manner. In many races it did not pass be- yond the belief in sorcerers, under the gross form in 67 LIFE OF JESUS. which we still find it in certain parts of Oceania. Among some, the religious sentiment degenerated into the shameful scenes of butchery which form the char- acter of the ancient religion of Mexico. Amongst others, especially in Africa, it became pure Fetichism, that is, the adoration of a material object, to which were attributed supernatural powers. Like the in- stinct of love, which at times elevates the most vulgar man above himself, yet sometimes becomes perverted and ferocious, so this divine faculty of religion during a long period seems only to be a cancer which must be extirpated from the human race, a cause of errors and crimes which the wTise ought to endeavor to suppress. The brilliant civilizations which were developed from a very remote antiquity in China, in Babylonia, and in Egypt, caused a certain progress to be made in religion. China arrived very early at a sort of medi- ocre good sense, which prevented great extravagances. She neither knew the advantages nor the abuses of the religious spirit. At all events, she had not in this way any influence in directing the great current of human- ity. The religions of Babylonia and Syria were never freed from a substratum of strange sensuality; these religions remained, until their extinction in the fourth and fifth centuries of our era, schools of immorality, in which at intervals glimpses of the divine world were obtained by a sort of poetic intuition. Egypt, notwith- standing an apparent kind of Fetichism, had very early metaphysical dogmas and a lofty symbolism. But doubtless these interpretations of a refined theology were not primitive. Man has never, in the possession of a clear idea, amused himself by clothing it in sym- bols: it is oftener after long reflections, and from the impossibility felt by the human mind of resigning itself LIIE OF JESUS. 69 to the absurd, that we seek ideas under the ancient mystic images whose meaning is lost. Moreover, it is not from Egypt that the faith of humanity has come. The elements which, in the religion of a Christian, passing through a thousand transformations, came from Egypt and Syria, are exterior forms of little con- sequence, or dross of which the most purified worships always retain some portion. The grand defect of the religions of which we speak was their essentially super- stitious character. They only threw into the world millions of amulets and charms. No great moral thought could proceed from races oppressed by a secu- lar despotism, and accustomed to institutions which precluded the exercise of individual liberty. The poetry of the soul — faith, liberty, virtue, devo- tion— made their appearance in the world with the two great races which, in one sense, have made humanity, viz., the Indo-European and the Semitic races. The first religious intuitions of the Indo-European race were essentially naturalistic. But it was a profound and moral naturalism, a loving embrace of Nature by man, a delicious poetry, full of the sentiment of the Infinite — the principle, in fine, of all that which the Germanic and Celtic genius, of that which a Shake- speare and a Goethe should express in later times. It was neither theology nor moral philosophy — it was a state of melancholy, it was tenderness, it was imagine lion; it was, more than all, earnestness, the essentia condition of morals and religion. The faith of human ity, however, could not come from thence, because these ancient forms of worships had great difficulty in detaching themselves from Polytheism, and could not attain to a very clear symbol. Brahminism has only survived to the present day by virtue of the astonishing 70 LIFE OF JESUS. faculty of conservation which India seems to possess. Buddhism failed in all its approaches toward the West. Druidism remained a form exclusively national, and without universal capacity. The Greek attempts at reform, Orpheism, the Mysteries, did not suffice to give a solid aliment to the soul. Persia alone succeeded in making a dogmatic religion, almost Monotheistic, and skilfully organized; but it is very possible that this organization itself was but an imitation, or borrowed. At all events, Persia has not converted the world ; she herself, on the contrary, was converted when she saw the flag of the Divine unity as proclaimed by Moham- medanism appear on her frontiers. It is the Semitic race1 which has the glory of having made the religion of humanity. Far beyond the con- fines of history, resting under his tent, free from the taint of a corrupted world, the Bedouin patriarch pre- pared the faith of mankind. A strong antipathy against the voluptuous worships of Syria, a grand sim- plicity of ritual, the complete absence of temples, and the idol reduced to insignificant theraphim, constituted his superiority. Among all the tribes of the nomadic Semites, that of the Beni-Israel was already chosen for immense destinies. Ancient relations with Egypt, whence perhaps resulted some purely material ingredi- ents, did but augment their repulsion to- idolatry. A "Law" or Thora, very anciently written on tables of stone, and which they attributed to their great libera- tor Moses, had become the code of Monotheism, and lI remind the reader that this word means here simply the peo- ple who speak or have spoken one of the languages called Semitic. Such a designation is entirely defective; but it is one of those words, like "Gothic architecture/' "Arabian numerals," which we must preserve to be understood, even after we have demonstrated the error that they imply. LIFE OF JESUS. 71 contained, as compared with the institutions of Egypt and Chaldea, powerful germs of social equality and morality. A chest or portable ark, having staples on each side to admit of bearing poles, constituted all their religious materiel; there were collected the sacred ob- jects of the nation, its relics, its souvenirs, and, lastly, the "book,"1 the journal of the tribe, always open, but which was written in with great discretion. The fam- ily charged with bearing the ark and watching over the portable archives, being near the book and having the control of it, very soon became important. From hence, however, the institution which was to control the future did not come. The Hebrew priest did not differ much from the other priests of antiquity. The character which essentially distinguishes Israel among theocratic peoples is, that its priesthood has always been subordinated to individual inspiration. Besides its priests, each wandering tribe had its iiabi or prophet, a sort of living oracle who was consulted for the solu- tion of obscure questions supposed to require a high degree of clairvoyance. The nabis of Israel, organ- ized in groups or schools, had great influence. De- fenders of the ancient democratic spirit, enemies of the rich, opposed to all political organization, and to what- soever might draw Israel into the paths of other na- tions, they were the true authors of the religious pre- eminence of the Jewish people. Very early they an- nounced unlimited hopes, and when the people, in part the victims of their impolitic counsels, had been crushed by the Assyrian power, they proclaimed that a kingdom without bounds was reserved for them, that one day Jerusalem would be the capital of the whole world, and the human race become Jews, Jerusalem *i Sam. x. 25. 73 LIFE OF JESUS. and its temples appeared to them as a city placed on the summit of a mountain, toward which all people should turn, as an oracle whence the universal law should proceed, as the centre of an ideal kingdom, in which the human race, set at rest by Israel, should find again the joys of Eden.1 Mystical utterances already made themselves heard, tending to exalt the martyrdom and celebrate the power of the "Man of Sorrows/' Respecting one of those sublime sufferers, who, like Jeremiah, stained the streets of Jerusalem with their blood, one of the in- spired wrote a song upon the sufferings and triumph of the "servant of God," in which all the prophetic force of the genius of Israel seemed concentrated.2 "For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground : he hath no form nor comeliness. He is despised and rejected of men; and we hid, as it were, our faces from him; he was de- spised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows ; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him ; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray ; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth : he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. And he *Isa. ii. 1-4, and especially chaps, ad., and following, lx., and fol- lowing; Micah iv. I, and following. It must be recollected that the second part of the book of Isaiah, beginning at chap, xl., is not by Isaiah. *Isa, lil 13, and following, and liii. entirely. LIFE OF JESUS. ?3 made his grave with the wicked. When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand." Important modifications were made at the same time in the Thora. New texts, pretending to represent the true law of Moses, such as Deuteronomy, were pro- duced, and inaugurated in reality a very different spirit from that of the old nomads. A marked fanaticism was the dominant feature of this spirit. Furious be- lievers unceasingly instigated violence against all who wandered from the worship of Jehovah — they suc- ceeded in establishing a code of blood, making death the penalty for religious faults. Piety brings, almost always, singular contradictions of vehemence and mild- ness. This zeal, unknown to the coarser simplicity of the time of the Judges, inspired tones of moving prophecy and ^tender unction, which the world had never heard till then. A strong tendency toward social questions already made itself felt; Utopias, dreams of a perfect society, took a place in the code. The Penta- teuch, a mixture of patriarchal morality and ardent devotion, primitive intuitions and pious subtleties, like those which filled the souls of Hezekiah, of Josiah, and of Jeremiah, was thus fixed in the form in which we now see it, and became for ages the absolute rule of the national mind. This great book once created, the history of the Jew- ish people unfolded itself with an irresistible force. The great empires which followed each other in West- ern Asia, in destroying its hope of a terrestrial king- dom,'threw it into religious dreams, which it cherished with a kind of sombre passion. Caring little for the national dynasty or political independence, it accepted 74 LIFE OF JESUS. all governments which permitted it to practise freely its worship and follow its usages. Israel will hence- forward have no other guidance than that of its relig- ious enthusiasts, no other enemies than those of the Divine unity, no other country than its Law. And this Law, it must be remarked, was entirely social and moral. It was the work of men penetrated with a high ideal of the present life, and believing that they had found the best means of realizing it The conviction of all was, that the Thora, well observed, could not fail to give perfect felicity, This Thora has nothing in common with the Greek or Roman "Laws," which, occupying themselves with scarcely anything but abstract right, entered little into questions of pri- vate happiness and morality. We feel beforehand that the results which will proceed from it will be of a social, and not a political order, that the work at which this people labors is a kingdom of God, not a civil re- public; a universal institution, not a nationality or a country. Notwithstanding numerous failures, Israel admir- ably sustained this vocation. A series of pious men, Ezra, Nehemiah, Onias, the Maccabees, consumed with zeal for the Law, succeeded each other in the defense of the ancient institutions. The idea that Israel was a holy people, a tribe chosen by God and bound to Him by covenant, took deeper and firmer root. An immense expectation filled their souls. All Indo-European an- tiquity had placed paradise in the beginning; all its poets had wept a vanished golden age. Israel placed the age of gold in the future. The perennial poesy of religious souls, the Psalms, blossomed from this ex- alted piety, with their divine and melancholy harmony. Israel became truly and specially the people of Go4, LIFE OF JESUS. T5 while around it the pagan religions were more and more reduced, in Persia and Babylonia, to an official charlatanism, in Egypt and Syria to a gross idolatry, and in the Greek and Roman world to mere parade. That which the Christian martyrs did in the first cen- turies of our era, that which the victims of persecuting orthodoxy have done, even in the bosom of Christian- ity, up to our time, the Jews did during the two cen- turies which preceded the Christian era. They were a living protest against superstition and religious ma- terialism. An extraordinary movement of ideas, end- ing in the most opposite results, made of them, at this epoch, the most striking and original people in the world. Their dispersion along all the coast of the Mediterranean, and the use of the Greek language, which they adopted when out of Palestine, prepared the way for a propagandism, of which ancient societies, divided into small nationalities, had never offered a single example. Up to the time of the Maccabees, Judaism, in spite of its persistence in announcing that it would one day be the religion of the human race, had had the character- istic of all the other worships of antiquity, it was a worship of the family and the tribe. The Israelite thought, indeed, that his worship was the best, and spoke with contempt of strange gods ; but he believed also that the religion of the true God was made for himself alone. Only when a man entered into the Jewish family did he embrace the worship of Jehovah.1 No Israelite cared to convert the stranger to a worship which was the patrimony of the sons of Abraham. The development of the pietistic spirit, after Ezra and Nehemiah, led to a much firmer and more logical con- 'Ruth I 16. MJf LIFE OP JESUS. ception. Judaism became the true religion in a more absolute manner ; to all who wished, the right of enter- ing it was given;1 soon it became a work of piety to bring into it the greatest number possible.2 Doubtless the refined sentiment which elevated John the Baptist, Jesus, and St. Paul above the petty ideas of race, did not yet exist ; for, by a strange contradiction, these con- verts were little respected and were treated with dis- dain.3 But the idea of a sovereign religion, the idea that there was something in the world superior to coun- try, to blood, to laws — the idea which makes apostles and martyrs — was founded. Profound pity for the pagans, however brilliant might be their worldly for- tune, was henceforth the feeling of every Jew.4 By a cycle of legends destined to furnish models of immov- able firmness, such as the histories of Daniel and his companions, the mother of the Maccabees and her seven sons,5 the romance -of the race-course of Alex- andria6— the guides of the people sought above all to inculcate the idea, that virtue consists in a fanatical at- tachment to fixed religious institutions. The persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes made this idea a passion, almost a frenzy. It was something very analogous to that which happened under Nero, Esther ix. 27. 'Matt, xxiii. 15; Josephus, Vita, 23; B. /.. 11. xvii. 10, vn. iii. 3; Ant., xx. ii. 4; Horat, Sat. 1., iv., 143; Juv., xiv. 96, and following; Tacitus, Ann., 11. 85 ; Hist., v. 5 ; Dion Cassius, xxxvii, 17. 'Mishnah, Shebiit, x. 9; Talmud of Babylon, Niddah, fol. 13 b; Jebamoth, 47 b, Kiddushim, 70 b; Midrash, Jalkut Ruth, fol. 163 d. 4 Apocryphal letter of Baruch, in Fabricius, Cod. pseud, v. t., ii., 147, and following. •n. Book of Maccabees, ch. vii. and the De Maccabceis, attribu- ted to Josephus. Cf. Epistle to the Hebrews xi. 33, and following. •in. Book (Apocr.) of Maccabees; Rufin, Suppl. ad Jos., Contra Aptonem, ii. 5. LIFE OF JESUS. 77 two hundred and thirty years later. Rage and despair threw the believers into the world of visions and dreams. The first apocalypse, 'The Book of Daniel," appeared. It was like a revival of prophecy, but under a very different form from the ancient one, and with a much larger idea of the destinies of the world. The Book of Daniel gave, in a manner, the last expression to the Messianic hopes. The Messiah was no longer a king, after the manner of David and Solomon, a theo- cratic and Mosaic Cyrus; he was a "Son of man" ap- pearing in the clouds1 — a supernatural being, invested with human form, charged to rule the world, and to preside over the golden age. Perhaps the Sosiosh of Persia, the great prophet who was to come, charged with preparing the reign of Ormuzd, gave some fea- tures to this new ideal.2 The unknown author of the Book of Daniel had, in any case, a decisive influence on the religious event which was about to transform the world. He supplied the mise-en-scene, and the techni- cal terms of the new belief in the Messiah; and we might apply to him what Jesus said of John the Bap- tist : Before him, the prophets ; after him, the kingdom of God. It must not, however, be supposed that this pro- foundly religious and soul-stirring movement had par- ticular dogmas for its primary impulse, as was the case in all the conflicts which have disturbed the bosom of Christianity.' The Jew of this epoch was as little theo- logical as possible. He did not speculate upon the ,Chap. vii. 13, and following. %Vendidud, chap. xix. 18, 19: Minokhired, a passage published in the "Zeitschrift dor dcutschen morgenlandischen Gesellschaft" chap. i. 263; Boundehesch, chap. xxxi. The want of certain chronology for the Zend and Pehlvis texts leaves much doubt hovering over the relations between the Jewish and Persian be- liefs, 78 LIFE OF JBSTTS. essence of the Divinity; the heliefs about angels, about the destinies of man, about the Divine personality, of which the first germs might already be perceived, were quite optional — they were meditations, to which each one surrendered himself according to the turn of his mind, but of which a great number of men had never heard. They were the most orthodox even, who did not share in these particular imaginations, and who adhered to the simplicity of the Mosaic law. No dog- matic power analogous to that which orthodox Chris- tianity has given to the Church then existed. It was only at the beginning of the third century, when Chris- tianity had fallen into the hands of reasoning races, mad with dialectics and metaphysics, that that fever for definitions commenced which made the history of the Church but the history of one immense controversy. There were disputes also among the Jews — excited schools brought opposite solutions to almost all the questions which were agitated; but in these contests, of which the Talmud has preserved the principal de- tails, there is not a single word of speculative theology. To observe and maintain the law, because the law was just, and because, when well observed, it gave happi- ness— such was Judaism. No credo, no theoretical symbol. One of the disciples of the boldest Arabian philosophy, Moses Maimonides, was able to become the oracle of the synagogue, because he was well versed in the canonical law. The reigns of the last Asmoneans, and that of Herod, saw the excitement grow still stronger. They were filled by an uninterrupted series of religious move- ments. In the degree that power became secularized, and passed into the hands of unbelievers, the Jewish people lived less and less for the earth, and became LIFE OF JESUS. 79 more and more absorbed by the strange fermentation which was operating in their midst. The world, dis- tracted by other spectacles, had little knowledge of that which passed in this forgotten corner of the East. The minds abreast of their age were, however, better in- formed. The tender and clear-sighted Virgil seems to answer, as by a secret echo, to the second Isaiah. The birth of a child throws him into dreams of a universal palingenesis.1 These dreams were of every-day occur- rence, and shaped into a kind of literature which was designated Sibylline. The quite recent formation of the empire exalted the imagination ; the great era of peace on which it entered, and that impression of melancholy sensibility which the mind experiences after long periods of revolution, gave birth on all sides to unlimited hopes. In Judea expectation was at its height. Holy per- sons— among whom may be named the aged Simeon, who, legend tells us, held Jesus in his arms; Anna, daughter of Phanuel, regarded as a prophetess2 — passed their life about the temple, fasting, and praying, that it might please God not to take them from the World without having seen the fulfillment of the hopes of Israel. They felt a powerful presentiment; they were sensible of the approach of something unknown. This confused mixture of clear views and dreams, this alternation of deceptions and hopes, these cease- less aspirations, driven back by an odious reality, found at last their interpretation in the incomparable man, to lEg\. iv. The Cumceum carmen (v. 4) was a sort of Sibylline ppocalypse, borrowed from the philosophy of history familiar to the East. See Servius on this verse, and Carmina Sibyllina, lii. 97-817; cf. Tac, Hist., v. 13. 2Lnke ii. 2$» and following. 80 LIFE OF JESUS. whom the universal conscience has decreed the title of Son of God, and that with justice, since he has ad- vanced religion as no other has done, or probably ever .will be able to do. CHAPTER II. INFANCY AND YOUTH OF JESUS — HIS FIRST IMPRESSIONS. Jesus was born at Nazareth,1 a small town of Galilee, which before his time had no celebrity.2 All his life he was designated by the name of "the Naza- rene,,,s and it is only by a rather embarrassed and round-about way,4 that, in the legends respecting him, *Matt. xiii. 54, and following ; Mark vi. 1, and following ; John L 45-46. 2It is neither named in the writings of the Old Testament, nor in Josephus, nor in the Talmud. 'Mark i. 24; Luke xviii. 37; John xix, 19; Acts ii. 22, iii. 6. Hence the name of Nazarenes for a long time applied to Chris- tians, and which still designates them in all Mohammedan coun- tries. *The census effected by Quirinus, to which legend attributes the journey from Bethlehem, is at least ten years later than the year in which, according to Luke and Matthew, Jesus was bom. The two evangelists in effect make Jesus to be born under the reign of Herod (Matt. ii. 1, 19, 22; Luke i. 5). Now, the census of Quir- inus did not take place until after the deposition of Archelaus, i.e., ten years after the death of Herod, the 37th year from the era of Actium (Josephus, Ant., xvn. xiii. 5, xvm. i. 1, ii. 1). The inscription by which it was formerly pretended to establish that Quirinus had levied two censuses is recognized as false (see Orelli, Inscr. Lat., No. 623, and the supplement of Henzen in this number; Borghesi, Fastes Consulaires [yet unpublished], in the year 742). The census in any case would only be applied to the parts reduced to Roman provinces, and not to the tetrarchies. The texts by which it is sought to prove that some of the opera- tions for statistics and tribute commanded by Augustus ought to extend to the dominion of the Herods, either do not mean what they have been made to say, or are from Christian authors who have borrowed this statement from the Gospel of Luke. That which proves, besides, that the journey of the family of Jesus to Bethlehem is not historical, is the motive attributed to it. Jesus was not of the family of David (see Chap. XV.), and if he had been, we should still not imagine that his parents should have been forced, for an operation purely registrative and financial, to come to enrol themselves in the place whence their ancestors had pro- It 82 LIFE OF JESUS. he is made to be born at Bethlehem. We shall see later1 the motive for this supposition, and how it was the necessary consequence of the Messianic character attributed to Jesus.2 The precise date of his birth is unknown. It took place under the reign of Augustus, about the Roman year 750, probably some years before the year 1 of that era which all civilized people date from the day on which he was born.3 The name of Jesus, which was given him, is an alter- ation from Joshua. It was a very common name ; but afterward mysteries, and an allusion to his character of Saviour, were naturally sought for in it.4 Perhaps he, like all mystics, exalted himself in this respect. It is thus that more than one great vocation in history has been caused by a name given to a child without pre- meditation. Ardent natures never bring themselves to see aught of chance in what concerns them. God has ceeded a thousand years before. In imposing such an obligation, the Roman authority would have sanctioned pretensions threaten- ing her safety. ?Chap. XIV. 3Matt. ii. 1, and following; Luke ii. 1, and following. The omis- sion of this narrative in Mark, and the two parallel passages, Matt. xiii. 54, and Mark vi. 1, where Nazareth figures as the "country" of Jesus, prove that such a legend was absent from the primitive text which has furnished the rough draft of the present Gospels of Matthew and Mark. It was to meet oft-repeated ob- jections that there were added to the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew reservations, the contradiction of which with the rest of the text was not so flagrant, that it was felt necessary to correct the passages which had at first been written from quite another point of view. Luke, on the contrary (chap. iv. 16), writing more carefully, has employed, in order to be consistent, a more softened expression. As to John, he knows nothing of the journey to Bethlehem ; for him, Jesus is merely "of Nazareth" or "Galilean," in two circumstances in which it would have been of the highest importance to recall his birth at Bethlehem (chap. i. 45, 46, vi 41, 42). 'It is known that the calculation which serves as basis of the common era was made in the sixth century by Dionysius the Less. This calculation implies certain purely hypothetical data. 'Matt. i. 21 ; Luke 1. 31. LIFE OF JESUS. 83 regulated everything for them, and they see a sign of the supreme will in the most insignificant circum- stances. The population of Galilee was very mixed, as the very name of the country1 indicated. This province counted amongst its inhabitants, in the time of Jesus, many who were not Jews ( Phoenicians, Syrians, Arabs, and even Greeks).2 The conversions to Judaism were not rare in these mixed countries. It is therefore im- possible to raise here any question of race, and to seek to ascertain what blood flowed in the veins of him who has contributed most to efface the distinction of blood in humanity. He proceeded from the ranks of the people.3 His father, Joseph, and his mother, Mary, were people in humble circumstances, artisans living by their labor,4 in the state so common in the East, which is neither ease nor poverty. The extreme simplicity of life in such countries, by dispensing with the need of comfort, renders the privileges of wealth almost useless, and makes every one voluntarily poor. On the other hand, the total want of taste for art, and for that which con- tributes to the elegance of material life, gives a naked aspect to the house of him who otherwise wants for nothing. Apart from something sordid and repulsive which Islamism bears everywhere with it, the town of Nazareth, in the time of Jesus, did not perhaps much differ from what it is to-day.5 We see the streets %Gclil haggoyim, "Circle of the Gentiles.** *Strabo, xvi. ii. 35; Jos., Vita, 12. 'We shall explain later (Chap. XIV.) the origin of the genealo- gies intended to connect him with the race of David. The Ebio- nites suppressed them (Epiph., Adv. Hcer., xxx. 14). *Matt. xiii. 55 ; Mark vi. 3 ; John vi. 42. *The rough aspect of the ruins which cover Palestine proves that the towns which were not constructed in the Roman manner 84 LIFE OF JESUS. where he played when a child, in the stony paths or little crossways which separate the dwellings. The house of Joseph doubtless much resembled those poor shops, lighted by the door, serving at once for shop, kitchen, and bedroom, having for furniture a mat, some cushions on the ground, one or two clay pots, and a painted chest. The family, whether it proceeded from one or many marriages, was rather numerous. Jesus had brothers and sisters,1 of whom he seems to have been the eldest.2 All have remained obscure, for it appears that the four personages who were named as his brothers, and among whom one, at least — James — had acquired great im- portance in the earliest years of the development of Christianity, were his cousins-german. Mary, in fact, had a sister also named Mary,3 who married a certain Alpheus or Cleophas (these two names appear to desig- nate the same person4), and was the mother of several sons. who played a considerable part among the first disciples of Jesus. These cousins-german who ad- hered to the young Master, while his own brothers op- posed him,5 took the title of "brothers of the Lord."* were very badly built. As to the form of the houses, it is, in Syria, so simple and so imperiously regulated by the climate, that it can scarcely ever have changed. 'Matt. xii. 46, and following, xiii. 55, and following; Mark iii. 31, and following, vi. 3; Luke viii. 19, and following; John ii. 12, vii. 3, 5, 10; Acts i. 14. 2Matt. i. 25. *That these two sisters should bear the same name is a singular fact. There is probably some error arising from the habit of giving the name of Mary indiscriminately to Galilean women. "They are not etymologically identical. AXcpaioS is the transcrip- tion of the Syro-Chaldean name Halphai ; KXooTtdi o\- KX.E ortas 15 a shortened form oiKXto7tazpos. But there might have been an arti- ficial substitution of one for the other, just as Joseph was called "Iiegissippus," the Eliakim "Alcimus," &c. 'John vii. 3, and following. 8In fact, the four personages who are named (Matt. xiii. 55, LIFE OF JESUS. 85 The real brothers of Jesus, like their mother, became important only after his death.1 Even then they do not appear to have equaled in importance their cousins, whose conversion had been more spontaneous, and whose character seems to have had more originality. Their names were so little known, that when the evan- gelist put in the mouth of the men of Nazareth the enumeration of the brothers according to natural rela- tionship, the names of the sons of Cleophas first pre- sented themselves to him. His sisters were married at Nazareth,2 and he spent the first years of his youth there. Nazareth was a small town in a hollow, opening broadly at the summit of the group of mountains which close the plain of Esdraelon on the north. The population is now from three to four thousand, and it can never have varied much.3 The cold there is sharp in winter, and the Mark vi. 3) as sons of Mary, mother of Jesus, Jacob, Joseph or Joses, Simon, and Jude, are found again a little later as sons of Mary and Cleophas. (Matt, xxvii. 56; Mark xv. 40; Gal. i. 19; Epist. James i. 1 ; Epist Jude 1 ; Euseb., Chron. ad ann. R. dcccx. ; Hist. Eccl., iii. II, 32; Constit. Apost., v'u. 46.)^ The hypothesis we offer alone removes the immense difficulty which is found in supposing two sisters having each three or four_ sons bearing the same names, and in admitting that James and Simon, the first two bishops of Jerusalem, designated as brothers of the Lord, may have been real brothers of Jesus, who had begun by being hostile to him and then were converted. The evangelist, hearing these four sons of Cleophas called "brothers of the Lord," has placed by mistake their names in the passage Matt. xiii. 5 = Mark vi. 3, instead of the names of the real brothers, which have always remained obscure. In this matter we may explain how the character of the personages called "brothers of the Lord," of James, for instance, is so different from that of the real brothers of Jesus as they are seen delineated in John vii. 2, and following. The expression "brother of the Lord" evidently constituted, in the primitive Church, a kind of order similar to that of the apostles. See especially 1 Cor. ix. 5. 1Acts i. 14. 2Mark vi. 3. * According to Josephus (B. /., in. iii. 2), the smallest town of Galilee had more than five thousand inhabitants. This is probably an exaggeration. 86 LIFE OF JESUS. climate very healthy. The town, like all the small Jewish towns at this period, was a heap of huts built without style, and would exhibit that harsh and poor aspect which villages in Semitic countries now present. The houses, it seems, did not differ much from those cubes of stone, without exterior or interior elegance, which still cover the richest parts of the Lebanon, and which, surrounded with vines and fig-trees, are still very agreeable. The environs, moreover, are charm- ing ; and no place in the world was so well adapted for dreams of perfect happiness. Even in our times Nazareth is still a delightful abode, the only place, per- haps, in Palestine in which the mind feels itself relieved from the burden which oppresses it in this unequaled desolation. The people are amiable and cheerful; the gardens fresh and green. Anthony the Martyr, at the end of the sixth century, drew an enchanting picture of the fertility of the environs, which he compared to paradise.1 Some valleys on the western side fully jus- tify his description. The fountain, where formerly the life and gaiety of the little town were concentrated, is destroyed; its broken channels contain now only a muddy stream. But the beauty of the women who meet there in the evening — that beauty which was re- marked even in the sixth century, and which was looked upon as a gift of the Virgin Mary2 — is still most strikingly preserved. It is the Syrian type in all its languid grace. No doubt Mary was there almost every day, and took her place with her jar on her shoul- der in the file of her companions who have remained unknown. Anthony the Martyr remarks that the Jew- ish women, generally disdainful to Christians, were 1 1 finer., § 5. 2 Ant. Martyr, Itiner., § 5. LIFE OF JESUS. 87 here full of affability. Even now religious animosity is weaker at Nazareth than elsewhere. The horizon from the town is limited. But if we ascend a little the plateau, swept by a perpetual breeze, which overlooks the highest houses, the prospect is splendid. On the west are seen the fine outlines of Carmel, terminated by an abrupt point which seems to plunge into the sea. Before us are spread out the double summit which towers above Megiddo; the mountains of the country of Shechem, with their holy places of the patriarchal age; the hills of Gilboa, the small, picturesque group to which are attached the graceful or terrible recollections of Shunem and of Endor; and Tabor, with its beautiful rounded form, which antiquity compared to a bosom. Through a de- pression between the mountains of Shunem and Tabor are seen the valley of the Jordan and the high plains of Peraea, which form a continuous line from the eastern side. On the north, the mountains of Safed, in inclin- ing toward the sea conceal St. Jean d'Acre, but permit the Gulf of Khai'fa to be distinguished. Such was the horizon of Jesus. This enchanted circle, cradle of the kingdom of God, was for years his world. Even in his later life he departed but little beyond the familiar lim- its of his childhood. For yonder, northward, a glimpse is caught, almost on the flank of Hermon, of Caesarea- Philippi, his furthest point of advance into the Gentile world ; and here southward, the more sombre aspect of these Samaritan hills foreshadows the dreariness of Judea beyond, parched as by a scorching wind of deso- lation and death. If the world, remaining Christian, but attaining to a better idea of the esteem in which the origin of its religion should be held, should ever wish to replace by 88 LIFE OF JESUS. authentic holy places the mean and apocryphal sanc- tuaries to which the piety of dark ages attached itself, it is upon this height of Nazareth that it will rebuild its temple. There, at the birthplace of Christianity, and in the centre of the actions of its Founder, the great church ought to be raised in which all Christians may worship. There, also, on this spot where sleep Joseph, the carpenter, and thousands of forgotten Nazarenes who never passed beyond the horizon of their valley, would be a better station than any in the world beside for the philosopher to contemplate the course of human affairs, to console himself for their uncertainty, and to reassure himself as to the Divine end which the world pursues through countless falterings, and in spite of the universal vanity. CHAPTER III. EDUCATION OF JESUS. This aspect of Nature, at once smiling and grand, was the whole education of Jesus. He learned to read and to write,1 doubtless, according to the Eastern method, which consisted in putting in the hands of the child a book, wrhich he repeated in cadence with his little comrades, until he knew it by heart.2 It is doubt- ful, however, if he understood the Hebrew writings in their original tongue. His biographers make him quote them according to the translations in the Ara- mean tongue ;3 his principles of exegesis, as far as we can judge of them by those of his disciples, much re- sembled those which were then in vogue, and which form the spirit of the Tar gums and the Midrashim* The schoolmaster in the small Jewish towns was the hazzan, or reader in the synagogues.8 Jesus frequented little the higher schools of the scribes or sopherim (Nazareth had perhaps none of them), and he had none of those titles which confer, in the eyes of the vulgar, the privileges of knowledge.6 It would, never- theless, be a great error to imagine that Jesus was what we call ignorant. Scholastic education among us draws a profound distinction, in respect of persona! worth, between those who have received and those who have been deprived of it. It was not so in the East, 1 John viii. 6. *Testam. of the Twelve Patriarchs, Levi. 6. "Matt, xxvii. 46 ; Mark xv. 34. •Jewish translations and commentaries of the Talmudic epoch, ^lishnafy Shabbath, i. 3. 'Matt xiii. 54, and following ; John vii. 15. 89 90 LIFE OF JESUS. nor, in general, in the good old times. The state of ignorance in which, among us, owing to our isolated and entirely individual life, those remain who have not passed through the schools, was unknown in those soci- eties where moral culture, and especially the general spirit of the age, was transmitted by the perpetual in- tercourse of man with man. The Arab, who has never had a teacher, is often, nevertheless, a very superior man; for the tent is a kind of school always open, where, from the contact of well-educated men, there is produced a great intellectual and even literary move- ment. The refinement of manners and the acuteness of the intellect have, in the East, nothing in common with what we call education. It is the men from the schools, on the contrary, who are considered badly trained and pedantic. In this social state, ignorance, which, among us, condemns a man to an inferior rank, is the condition of great things and of great originality, It is not probable that Jesus knew Greek. This lan- guage was very little spread in Judea beyond the classes who participated in the government, and the towns inhabited by pagans, like Csesarea.1 The real mother tongue of Jesus was the Syrian dialect mixed writh Hebrew, which was then spoken in Palestine. * ^ishnah, Shckalim, Hi. 2; Talmud of Jerusalem, Megilla, hal- aca xi.; Sota, vii. 1; Talmud of Babylon, Baba Kama, 83 a; Megilla, 8 b, and following. 2Matthew xxvn. 46 ; Mark iii. 17, v- 4h ,v»« 34* xiv. 36, xv. 34. The expression v ic&rpioS (pavrf in the writers of the time, always designates the Semitic dialect, which was spoken in Palestine (11. Mace. vii. 21, 27, xii. 37; Acts xxi. 37 f 40, xxii. 2, xxvi. 14; Jo- sephus, Ant., xvni., vi., 10, xx. sub fin; B. /., procem I; v. vi., 3, V. ix. 2, vi. ii. 1: Against Appian, 1. 9; De Mace t 12, 16). We shall show, later, that some of the documents which served as the basis for the synoptic Gospels were written in this Semitic dia- lect. It was the same with many of the Apocrypha (iv. Book of Mace. xvi. ad calcem, &c). In fine, the sects issuing directly from the first Galilean movement; (Nazarenes, Ebionim, &c), which LIFE OF JESUS. 91 Still less probably had he any knowledge of Greek cul- ture. This culture was proscribed by the doctors of Palestine, who included in the same malediction ''he who rears swine, and he who teaches his son Greek science."1 At all events it had not penetrated into little towns like Nazareth. Notwithstanding the anathema of the doctors, some Jews, it is true, had already em- braced the Hellenic culture. Without speaking of the Jewish school of Egypt, in which the attempts to amal- gamate Hellenism and Judaism had been in operation nearly two hundred years, a Jew — Nicholas of Damas- cus— had become, even at this time, one of the most distinguished men, one of the best informed, and one of the most respected of his age. Josephus was des- tined soon to furnish another example of a Jew com- pletely Grecianized. But Nicholas was only a Jew in blood. Josephus declares that he himself was an ex- ception among his contemporaries;2 and the whole schismatic school of Egypt was detached to such a de- gree from Jerusalem that we do not find the least allusion to it either in the Talmud or in Jewish tradi- tion. Certain it is that Greek was very little studied at Jerusalem, that Greek studies were considered as dangerous, and even servile, that they were regarded, at the best, as a mere womanly accomplishment.3 The study of the Law was the only one accounted liberal and worthy of a thoughtful man.4 Questioned as to continued a long time in Batanea and Hauran, spoke a Semitic dialect, Eusebius, De Situ et Nomin hoc. Hebr., at the word Xa>/3&; Epiph.. Adv. Hcer., xxix. 7, 9, xxx. 3; St. Jerome, in Matt. xii. 13; Dial. adv. Pelag., iii. 2). lMishnah, Sanhedrim, xi. 1 ; Talmud of Babylon, Baba Kama, 82 b and 83 a; Sota, 49 a and b; Menachoth, 64 b; comp. n. Mace. iv. 10, and following. 'Jos., Ant. xx. xi., 2. 'Talmud of Jerusalem, Peak, i. 1. *Jos., Ant., loc. cit. ; Orig., Contra Celsum, ii. 34. ' 92 LIFE OF JESUS. the time when it would be proper to teach children "Greek wisdom," a learned rabbi had answered, "At the time when it is neither day nor night; since it is written of the Law, Thou shalt study it day and night/'1 Neither directly nor indirectly, then, did any element of Greek culture reach Jesus. He knew nothing be- yond Judaism ; his mind preserved that free innocence which an extended and varied culture always weakens. In the very bosom of Judaism he remained a stranger to many efforts often parallel to his own. On the one hand, the asceticism of the Essenes or the Therapeu- tee;2 on the other, the fine efforts of religious philoso- phy put forth by the Jewish school of Alexandria, and of which Philo, his contemporary, was the ingenious Interpreter, were unknown to him. The frequent re- semblances which we find between him and Philo, those excellent maxims about the love of God, charity, rest in God,3 which are like an echo between the Gospel and the writings of the illustrious Alexandrian thinker, proceed from the common tendencies which the wants of the time inspired in all elevated minds. Happily for him, he was also ignorant of the strange scholasticism which was taught at Jerusalem, and which was soon to constitute the Talmud. If some Pharisees had already brought it into Galilee, he did not associate with them, and when, later, he encoun- tered this silly casuistry, it only inspired him with dis- gust. We may suppose, however, that the principles 1Talmud of Jerusalem, Peak, i. I ; Talmud of Babylon, Mcna- choth, 99 b. 2The Therapeutce of Philo are a branch of the Essenes. Their name appears to be but a Greek translation of that of the Essenes (Etitiaiot, asaya, "doctors"). Cf. Philo, De Vita Contempt., init. 'See especially the treatises Quis Rerum Divinarum Haeres sit and De Pltilanthropia of Philo. LIFE OF JESUS. M of Hillel were not unknown to him. Hillel, fifty yen' - before him, had given utterance to aphorisms very analogous to his own. By his poverty, so meekly en- dured, by the sweetness of his character, by his oppo- sition to priests and hypocrites, Hillel was the true master of Jesus,1 if indeed it may be permitted to speak of a master in connection with so high an originality as his. The perusal of the books of the Old Testament made much impression upon him. The canon of the holy books was composed of two principal parts — the Law, that is to say, the Pentateuch, and the Prophets, such as we now possess them. An extensive allegorical exegesis was applied to all these books; and it was sought to draw from them something that was not in them, but which responded to the aspirations of the age. The Law, which represented not the ancient laws of the country, but Utopias, the factitious laws and pious frauds of the time of the pietistic kings, had be- come, since the nation had ceased to govern itself, an inexhaustible theme of subtle interpretations. As to the Prophets and the Psalms, the popular persuasion was that almost all the somewhat mysterious traits that were in these books had reference to the Messiah, and it was sought to find there the type of him who should realize the hopes of the nation. Jesus participated in the taste which every one had for these allegorical in- terpretations. But the. true poetry of the Bible, which escaped the puerile exegetists of Jerusalem, was fully revealed to his grand genius. The Law does not appear to have had much charm for him; he thought 1Pirki Aboth, chap. i. and ii. ; Talm. of Jerus., Pesachim, \i. i; Talm. of Bab., Pesachim, 66 a; Shabbath, 30 b and 31 a; Jama, 35 b. 94 LIFE OF JESUS. that he could do something better. But the religious lyrics of the Psalms were in marvellous accordance with his poetic soul; they were, all his life, his food and sustenance. The prophets — Isaiah in particular, and his successor in the record of the time of the captivity — with their brilliant dreams of the future, their im- petuous eloquence, and their invectives mingled with enchanting pictures, were his true teachers. He read also, no doubt, many apocryphal works — i. e., writings somewhat modern, the authors of which, for the sake of an authority only granted to very ancient writings, had clothed themselves with the names of prophets and patriarchs. One of these books especially struck him, namely, the Book of Daniel. This book, composed by an enthusiastic Jew of the time of Antiochus Epi- phanes, under the name of an ancient sage,1 was the resume of the spirit of those later times. Its author, a true creator of the philosophy of history, had for the first time dared to see in the march of the world and the succession of empires, only a purpose subordinate to the destinies of the Jewish people. Jesus was early penetrated by these high hopes. Perhaps, also, he had read the books of Enoch, then revered equally with the holy books,2 and the other writings of the same class, which kept up so much excitement in the popular ^he legend of Daniel existed as early as the seventh century B.C. (Ezekiel xiv. 14 and following, xxviii. 3). It was for the necessities of the legend that he was made tqjive at the time of the Babylonian captivity. *Epist. Jude, 14 and following; 2 Peter ii. 4, 11 ; Testam. of the Twelve Patriarchs, Simeon. 5: Levi, 14, 16; Judah, 18; Zab., 3; Dan, 5; Naphtali, 4. The "Book of Enoch" still forms an inte- gral part of the Ethiopian Bible. Such as we know it from the Ethiopian version, it is composed of pieces of different dates, of which the most ancient are from the year 130 to 150 B.C. Some of these pieces have an analogy with the discourses of Jesus. Com- pare chaps, xcvi.-xcix. with Luke vi. 24, and following. LIFE OF JESUS. 95 imagination. The advent of the Messiah, with h^" glories and his terrors — the nations falling downvone after another, the cataclysm of heaven and earth — were the familiar food of his imagination ; and. as these revolutions were reputed near, and a great number of persons sought to calculate the time when they should happen, the supernatural state of things into which such visions transport us, appeared to him from the first perfectly natural and simple. That he had no knowledge of the general state of the world is apparent from each feature of his most authen- tic discourses. The earth appeared to him still divided into kingdoms warring with one another ; he seemed to ignore the "Roman peace," and the new state of society which its age inaugurated. He had no precise idea of the Roman power; the name of "Caesar" alone reached him. He saw building, in Galilee or its environs, Tiberias, Julias, Diocsesarea, Csesarea, gorgeous works of the Herods, who sought, by these magnificent struc- tures, to prove their admiration for Roman civilization, and their devotion toward the members of the family of Augustus, structures whose names, by a caprice of fate, now serve, though strangely altered, to designate miserable hamlets of Bedouins. He also probably saw Sebaste, a work of Herod the Great, a showy city, whose ruins would lead to the belief that it had been carried there ready made, like a machine which had only to be put up in its place. This ostentatious piece of architecture arrived in Judea by cargoes; these hun- dreds of columns, all of the same diameter, the orna- ment of some insipid "Rue de Rivoli," these were what he called "the kingdoms of the world and all their glory." But this luxury of power, this administrative and official art, displeased him. What he loved were 9fi LIFE OF JESUS. his Galilean villages, confused mixtures of huts, of nests and holes cut in the rocks, of wells, of tombs, of fig-trees, and of olives. He always clung close to Nature. The courts of kings appeared to him as places where men wear fine clothes. The charming impossibilities with which his parables abound, when he brings kings and the mighty ones on the stage,1 prove that he never conceived of aristocratic society but as a young villager who sees the world through the prism of his simplicity. Still less was he acquainted with the new idea, cre- ated by Grecian science, which was the basis of all phi- losophy, and which modern science has greatly con- firmed, to wit, the exclusion of capricious gods, to whom the simple belief of ancient ages attributed the government of the universe. Almost a century before him, Lucretius had expressed, in an admirable manner, the unchangeableness of the general system of Nature. The negation of miracle — the idea that everything in the world happens by laws in which the personal inter- vention of superior beings has no share — was univer- sally admitted in the great schools of all the countries which had accepted Grecian science. Perhaps even Babylon and Persia were not strangers to it. Jesus knew nothing of this progress. Although born at a time when the principle of positive science was already proclaimed, he lived entirely in the supernatural. Never, perhaps, had the Jews been more possessed with the thirst for the marvellous. Philo, who lived in a great intellectual centre, and who had received a very complete education, possessed only a chimerical and inferior knowledge of science. Jesus, on this point, differed in no respect from his ,See, for example, Matt. xxii. 2, and following. LIFE OF JESUS. companions. He believed in the devil, whom he re- garded as a kind of evil genius,1 and he imagined, like all the world, that nervous maladies were produced by demons who possessed the patient and agitated him. The marvellous was not the exceptional for him ; it was his normal state. The notion of the supernatural, with its impossibilities, is coincident wTith the birth of ex- perimental science. The man who is strange to all ideas of physical laws, who believes that by praying he can change the path of the clouds, arrest disease, and even death, finds nothing extraordinary in miracle, in- asmuch as the entire course of things is to him the result of the free will of the Divinity. This intellectual state wTas constantly that of Jesus. But in his great soul such a belief produced effects quite opposed to those produced on the vulgar. Among the latter, the belief in the special action of God led to a foolish credulity, and the deceptions of charlatans. With him it led to a profound idea of the familiar relations of man with God, and an exaggerated belief in the power of man — beautiful errors, which were the secret of his power; for if they were the means of one day showing his deficiencies in the eyes of the physicist and the chemist, they gave him a power over his own age of which no individual had been possessed before his time, or has been since. His distinctive character very early revealed itself. Legend delights to show him even from his infancy in revolt against paternal authority, and departing from the common way to fulfill his vocation.2 It is certain, at least, that he cared little for the relations of kinship. 'Matt. vi. 13. 2Luke ii. 42 and following. The Apocryphal Gospels are full of similar histories carried to the grotesque. *® LIFE OF JESUS. His family do not seem to have loved him,1 and at times he seems to have been hard toward them.2 Jesus, like all men exclusively preoccupied by an idea, came to think little of the ties of blood. The bond of thought is the only one that natures of this kind recog- nize. "Behold my mother and my brethren," said he, in extending his hand toward his disciples; "he who does the will of my Father, he is my brother and my sister." The simple people did not understand the matter thus, and one day a woman passing near him cried out, "Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which gave thee suck!" But he said, "Yea, rather blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it."3 Soon, in his bold revolt against nature, he went still further, and we shall see him trampling under foot everything that is human, blood, love, and coun- try, and only keeping soul and heart for the idea which presented itself to him as the absolute form of goodness and truth. 'Matt. xiii. 57; Mark vi. 4; John vii. 3, and following. 2 Matt. xii. 48; Mark iii. 33: Luke viii. 21; John 11. 4; Gospel according to the Hebrews, in St. Jerome, Dial. adv. Pelag., iii 2. 3 Luke xi. 27, and following. CHAPTER IV. THE ORDER OF THOUGHT WHICH SURROUNDED THE DEVELOPMENT OF JESUS. As the cooled earth no longer permits us to under- stand the phenomena of primitive creation, because the fire which penetrated it is extinct, so deliberate explana- tions have always appeared somewhat insufficient, when applying our timid methods of induction to the revolutions of the creative epochs which have decided the fate of humanity. Jesus lived at one of those times when the game of public life is freely played, and when the stake of human activity is increased a hundredfold. Every great part, then, entails death; for such move- ments suppose liberty and an absence of preventive measures, which could not exist without a terrible alternative. In these days, man risks little and gains little. In heroic periods of human activity, man risked all and gained all. The good and the wicked, or at least those who believe themselves and are believed to be such, form opposite armies. The apotheosis is reached by the scaffold ; characters have distinctive fea- tures, which engrave them as eternal types in the mem- ory of men. Except in the French Revolution, no his- torical centre was as suitable as that in which Jesus was formed, to develop those hidden forces which humanity holds as in reserve, and which are not seen except in days of excitement and peril. If the government of the world were a speculative problem, and the greatest philosopher were the man 09 J85 LIFE 0* JESUS. best fitted to tell his fellows what they ought to believe, it would be from calmness and reflection that those great moral and dogmatic truths called religions would proceed. But it is not so. If we except Cakya-Mouni, the great religious founders have not been meta- physicians. Buddhism itself, whose origin is in pure thought, has conquered one-half of Asia by motives wholly political and moral. As to the Semitic relig- ions, they -are as little philosophical as possible. Moses and Mahomet were not men of speculation ; they were men of action. It was in proposing action to their fellow-countrymen, and to their contemporaries, that they governed humanity. Jesus, in like manner, was not a theologian, or a philosopher, having a more or less well-composed system. In order to be a dis- ciple of Jesus, it was not necessary to sign any formu- lary, or to pronounce any confession of faith ; one thing only was necessary— -to be attached to him, to love him. He never disputed about God, for he felt Him directly in himself. The rock of metaphysical subtleties, against which Christianity broke from the third cen- tury, was in nowise created by the Founder. Jesus had neither dogma nor system, but a fixed personal resolu- tion, which, exceeding in intensity every other created will, directs to this hour the destinies of humanity. The Jewish people had the advantage, from the cap- tivity of Babylon up to the Middle Ages, of being in a state of the greatest tension. This is why the interpre- ters of the spirit of the nation during this long period seemed to write under the action of an intense fever, which placed them constantly either above or below reason, rarely in its middle path. Never did man seize the problem of the future and of his destiny with a more desperate courage, more determined to go to ex- LIFE OF JESUS. 101 tremes. Not separating the lot of humanity from that of their little race, the Jewish thinkers were the first who sought for a general theory of the progress of our species. Greece, always confined within itself, and solely attentive to petty quarrels, has had admirable historians ; but before the Roman epoch, it would be in vain to seek in her a general system of the philosophy of history, embracing all humanity. The Jew, on the contrary, thanks to a kind of prophetic sense which renders the Semite at times marvellously apt to see the great lines of the future, has made history enter into religion. Perhaps he owes a little of this spirit to Persia. Persia, from an ancient period, conceived the history of the world as a series of evolutions, over each of which a prophet presided. Each prophet had his hazar, or reign of a thousand years (chiliasm), and from these successive ages, analogous to the Avatar of India, is composed the course of events which prepared the reign of Ormuzd. At the end of the time when the cycle of chiliasms shall be exhausted, the complete paradise will come. Men then will live happy; the earth will be as one plain; there will be only one lan- guage, one law, and one government for all. But this advent will be preceded by terrible calamities. Dahak (the Satan of Persia) will break his chains and fall upon the world. Two prophets will come to console mankind, and to prepare the great advent.1 These ideas ran through the world, and penetrated even to Rome, where they inspired a cycle of prophetic poems, of which the fundamental ideas were the division of the history of humanity into periods, the succession of the lYacna, xiii. 24: Theopompus, in Plut.. De hide et Osinde, sec. 47; Minokhired, a passage published in the Zeitschrift der deuts- chen morgenlandischen Cesellschaft, i., p, 263. 103 LIFE 01 JESUS. gods corresponding to these periods — a complete reno- vation of the world, and the final advent of a golden age.1 The book of Daniel, the book of Enoch, and certain parts of the Sibylline books,2 are the Jewish expression of the same theory. These thoughts were certainly far from being shared by all ; they were only embraced at first by a few persons of lively imagina- tion, who were inclined toward strange doctrines. The dry and narrow author of the book of Esther never thought of the rest of the world except to despise it, and to wish it evil.3 The disabused epicurean who wrote Ecclesiastes, thought so little of the future, that he considered it even useless to labor for his children ; in the eyes of this egotistical celibate, the highest stroke of wisdom was to use his fortune for his own enjoy- ment.4 But the great achievements of a people are generally wrought by the minority. Notwithstanding all their enormous defects, hard, egotistical, scoffing, cruel, narrow, subtle, and sophistical, the Jewish people are the authors of the finest movement of disinterested enthusiasm which history records. Opposition always makes the glory of a country. The greatest men of a nation are those whom it puts to death. Socrates was the glory of the Athenians, who would not suffer him to live amongst them. Spinoza was the greatest Jew of modern times, and the synagogue expelled him with ignominy. Jesus was the glory of the people of Israel, who crucified him. A gigantic dream haunted for centuries the Jewish 1 Virg., Eel. iv. ; Servius, at v. 4 of this Eclogue ; Nigidius, quoted by Servius, at v. 10. 2Book iii., 97=817. * Esther vi. 13, vii. 10, viii. 7, 11- 17, ix. 1-22; and in the apoc- rvphal parts, ix. 10, 11, xiv. 13, and following, xvi. 20, 24. "*Eccl. i. 11, ii. 16, 18-24, iii. 19-22,. iv. 8, 15, 16, v. 17, 18, vi. 3, 6, viii. 15, ix. 9, 10. LIFE OF JESUS. 103 people, constantly renewing its youth in its decrepitude. A stranger to the theory of individual recompense, which Greece diffused under the name of the immortal- ity of the soul, Judea concentrated all its power of love and desire upon the national future. She thought she possessed divine promises of a boundless future; and as the bitter reality, from the ninth century before our era, gave more and more the dominion of the world to physical force, and brutally crushed these aspirations, she took refuge in the union of the most impossible ideas, and attempted the strangest gyrations. Before the captivity, when all the earthly hopes of the nation had become weakened by the separation of the northern tribes, they dreamt of the restoration of the house of David, the reconciliation of the two divisions of the people, and the triumph of theocracy and the worship of Jehovah over idolatry. At the epoch of the captiv- ity, a poet, full of harmony, saw the splendor of a future Jerusalem, of which the peoples and the distant isles should be tributaries, under colors so charming, that one might say a glimpse of the visions of Jesus had reached him at a distance of six centuries.1 The victory of Cyrus seemed at one time to realize all that had been hoped. The grave disciples of the Avesta and the adorers of Jehovah believed themselves brothers. Persia had begun by banishing the multiple devas, and by transforming them into demons (divs), to draw from the old Arian imaginations (essentially naturalistic) a species of Monotheism. The prophetic tone of many of the teachings of Iran had much an- alogy with certain compositions of Hosea and Isaiah. Israel reposed under the Achemenidae,2 and under "Isaiah be., &c. 'The whole book of Esther breathes a great attachment to this dynasty. 104 LIFE OF JESUS. Xerxes (Ahasuerus) made itself feared by the Iranians themselves. But the triumphal and often cruel entry of Greek and Roman civilization into Asia, threw it back upon its dreams. More than ever it invoked the Messiah as judge and avenger of the people. A com- plete renovation, a revolution which should shake the world to its very foundation, was necessary in order to satisfy the enormous thirst of vengeance excited in it by the sense of its superiority, and by the sight of its humiliation.1 If Israel had possessed the spiritualistic doctrine, which divides man in two parts — the body and the soul — and finds it quite natural that while the body decays, the soul should survive, this paroxysm of rage and of energetic protestation would have had no existence. But such a doctrine, proceeding from the Grecian phi- losophy, was not in the traditions of the Jewish mind. The ancient Hebrew writings contain no trace of future rewards or punishments. Whilst the idea of the solidarity of the tribe existed, it was natural that a strict retribution according to individual merits should not be thought of. So much the worse for the pious man who happened to live in an epoch of impiety; he suffered, like the rest, the public misfortunes consequent on the general irreligion. This doctrine, bequeathed by the sages of the patriarchal era, constantly produced unsustainable contradictions. Already at the time of Job it was much eVaken ; the old men of Teman who professed it were considered behind the age, and the young Elihu, who intervened in order to combat them, dared to utter as his first word this essentially revolu- tionary sentiment, "Great men are not always wise; i apocryphal letter of Baruch, in Fabricius, Cod. pseud., V.T., ii. p. 147, and following. LIFE OF JESUS. 105 neither do the aged understand judgment."1 With the complications which had taken place in the world since the time of Alexander, the old Temanite and Mosaic principle became still more intolerable.2 Never had Israel been more faithful to the Law, and yet it was subjected to the atrocious persecution of Antiochus. Only a declaimer, accustomed to repeat old phrases denuded of meaning, would dare to assert that these evils proceeded from the unfaithfulness of the people.3 What! these victims who died for their faith, these heroic Maccabees, this mother with her seven sons, will Jehovah forget them eternally ? Will he abandon them to the corruption of the grave ?4 Worldly and incredu- lous Sadduceeism might possibly not recoil before such a consequence, and a consummate sage, like Antigonus of Soco,5 might indeed maintain that we must not prac- tise virtue like a slave in expectation of a recompense, that we must be virtuous without hope. But the mass of the people could not be contented with that. Some, attaching themselves to the principle of philosophical immortality, imagined the righteous living in the mem- ory of God, glorious forever in the remembrance of men, and judging the wicked who had persecuted them.6 "They live in the sight of. God; . . . they xJob xxxiii. g. "It is nevertheless remarkable that Jesus, son of Sirach, adheres to it strictly (chap. xvii. 26-28, xxii. 10, 11, xxx. 4, and following, xli. 1, 2, xliv. 9). The author of the book of Wisdom holds quite opposite opinions (iv. i, Greek text). *Esth. xiv. 6, 7 (apocr.) ; the apocryphal Epistle of Baruch (Fabricius, Cod. pseud., V.T., ii. p. 147, and following). *2 Mace. vii. 6Perke Aboth., i. 3. 'Wisdom ii.-vi. ; De Rationis Imperio, attributed to Josephus, 8, 13, 16, 18. Still we must remark that the author of this last treatise estimates the motive of personal recompense in a sec- ondary degree. The primary impulse of martyrs is the pure love of the Law, the advantage which lheir death will procure to the 106 LIFE OF JESUS. are known of God."1 That was their reward. Others, especially the Pharisees, had recourse to the doctrine of the resurrection.2 The righteous will live again in order to participate in the Messianic reign. They will live again in the flesh, and for a world of which they will be the kings and the judges ; they will be present at the triumph of their ideas and at the humiliation of their enemies. We find among the ancient people of Israel only very indecisive traces of this fundamental dogma. The Sadducee, who did not believe it, was in reality faithful to the old Jewish doctrine; it was the Pharisee, the believer in the resurrection, who was the innovator. But in religion it is always the zealous sect which inno- vates, which progresses, and which has influence. Be- sides this, the resurrection, an idea totally different from that of the immortality of the soul, proceeded very naturally from the anterior doctrines and from the position of the people. Perhaps Persia also furnished some of its elements.3 In any case, combining with the belief in the Messiah, and with the doctrine of a speedy renewal of all things, it formed those apocalyp- tic theories which, without being articles of faith (the orthodox Sanhedrim of Jerusalem does not seem to have adopted them), pervaded all imaginations, and produced an extreme fermentation from one end of the Jewish world to the other. The total absence of dog- matic rigor caused very contradictory notions to be people, and the glory which will attach to their name. Comp. Wisdom iv. i, and following; Eccl. xliv., and following; Jos., B. /., II. viii. io, hi. viii. 5. Wisdom, iv. 1 ; De Rat. Imp., 16, 18. '2 Mace, vii. 9, 14, xii. 43, 44. Theopompus, in Diog. Laert.. Proem, 9. Bonndehesch, xxxi. The traces of the doctrine of the resurrection in the Avesta are very doubtful. LIFE OP JESUS. 107 admitted at one time, even upon so primary a point. Sometimes the righteous were to await the resurrec- tion;1 sometimes they were to be received at the mo- ment of death into Abraham's bosom;2 sometimes the resurrection was to be general ;3 sometimes it was to be reserved only for the faithful;4 sometimes it supposed a renewed earth and a new Jerusalem; sometimes it implied a previous annihilation of the universe. Jesus, as soon as he began to think, entered into the burning atmosphere which was created in Palestine by the ideas we have just stated. These ideas were taught in no school ; but they were in the very air, and his soul was early penetrated by them. Our hesitations and our doubts never reached him. On this summit of the mountain of Nazareth, where no man can sit to-day without an uneasy, though it may be a frivolous, feel- ing about his destiny, Jesus sat often untroubled by a doubt. Free from selfishness — that source of our troubles, which makes us seek with eagerness a reward for virtue beyond the tomb — he thought only of his work, of his race, and of humanity. Those mountains, that sea, that azure sky, those high plains in the hori- zon, were for him not the melancholy vision of a soul which interrogates Nature upon her fate, but the cer- tain symbol, the transparent shadow, of an invisible world, and of a new heaven. He never attached much importance to the political events of his time, and he probably knew little about them. The court of the Herods formed a world so different to his, that he doubtless knew it only by name. Herod the Great died about the year in which Jesus was born, leaving imperishable remembrances — monu- lJohn xi. 24. "Luke xvi. 22. Cf. De Rationis Imp., 13, 16, iS. 'Dan. xii. 2. *2 Mace. vii. 14. t08 LIFE OF JESUS. ments which must compel the most malevolent poster- ity to associate his name with that of Solomon ; never- theless, his work was incomplete, and could not be con- tinued. Profanely ambitious, and lost in a maze of religious controversies, this astute Idumean had the advantage which coolness and judgment, stripped of morality, give over passionate fanatics. But his idea of a secular kingdom of Israel, even if it had not been an anachronism in the state of the world in which it was conceived, would inevitably have miscarried, like the similar project which Solomon formed, owing to the difficulties proceeding from the character of the nation. His three sons were only lieutenants of the Romans, analogous to the rajahs of India under the English dominion. Antipater, or Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee and of Persea, of whom Jesus was a subject all his life, was an idle and useless prince,1 a favorite and flatterer of Tiberius,2 and too often misled by the bad influence of his second wife, Herodias.3 Philip, tetrarch of Gaulonitis and Batanea, into whose domin- ions Jesus made frequent journeys, was a much better sovereign.4 As to Archelaus, ethnarch of Jerusalem, Jesus could not know him, for he was about ten years old when this man, who was weak and without charac- ter, though sometimes violent, was deposed by Augus- tus.5 The last trace of self-government was thus lost to Jerusalem. United to Samaria and Idumea, Judea formed a kind of dependency of the province of Syria, in which the senator Publius Sulpicius Quirinus, well known as consul,6 was the imperial legate. A series of Mos., Ant., viii. v. i, vii. i and 2; Luke iii. 19. 2Ibid., xviii. ii. 3, iv. 5, v. 1. "Ibid., xvni. vii. 2. 4Ibid., xviii. iv. 6.* 5Ibid., xvn. xii. 2 ; and B. /., 11. vii. 3. "Orelli, Inscr. Lat., No. 3693; Henzen, Suppl., No. 7041; Fasti pr&tiestini, on the 6th of March, and on the 28th of April (in the LIFE OP JESUS. 109 Roman procurators, subordinate in important matters to the imperial legate of Syria — Coponius, Marcus Ambivius, Annius Rufus, Valerius Gratus, and lastly (in the twenty-sixth year of our era), Pontius Pilate1 — followed each other, and were constantly occupied in extinguishing the volcano which was seething beneath their feet. Continual seditions, excited by the zealots of Mosa- ism, did not cease, in fact, to agitate Jerusalem during all this time.2 The death of the seditious was certain ; but death, when the integrity of the Law was in ques- tion, was sought with avidity. To overturn the Roman eagle, to destroy the works of art raised by the Herods, in which the Mosaic regulations were not always respected3 — to rise up against the votive es- cutcheons put up by the procurators, the inscriptions of which appeared tainted with idolatry4 — were perpetual temptations to fanatics, who had reached that degree of exaltation which removes all care for life. Judas, son of Sariphea, Matthias, son of Margaloth, two very celebrated doctors of the law, formed against the estab- lished order a boldly aggressive party, which continued after their execution.5 The Samaritans were agitated by movements of a similar nature.6 The Law had never counted a greater number of impassioned dis- ciples than at this time, when he already lived who, by • Corpus Inscr. Lat., i. 314, 317) ; Borghesi, Fastes Consulaires (yet unedited), in the year 742; R. Bergmann, De Inscr. Lat. ad. P. S. Quirinium, ut videtur, referenda (Berlin, 1851). Cf. Tac, Ann., ii. 30, iii. 48; Strabo, xn. vi. 5. ^os., Ant., 1. xviii. 2 Ibid., the books xvi. and xviii. entirely, and B. J., books L and 11. 3Jos., Ant., xv. x. 4. Compare Book of Enoch, xcvii. 13, 14. *Philo, Leg. ad Caium, § 38. 6Jos., Ant., xvii. vi. 2, and following ; B. J., 1. xxxiii. 3, and fol- lowing. 6Jos., Ant., xviii. iv. 1, and following. 110 LIFE OF JESUS. the full authority of bis genius and of his great soul, was about to abrogate it. The "Zelotes" (Kenaim), or "Sicarii," pious assassins, who imposed on them- selves the task of killing whoever in their estimation broke the Law, began to appear.1 Representatives of a totally different spirit, the Thaumaturges, considered as in some sort divine, obtained credence in conse- quence of the imperious want which the age experi- enced for the supernatural and the divine.2 A movement which had much more influence upon Jesus was that of Judas the Gaulonite, or Galilean. Of all the exactions to which the country newly con- quered by Rome was subjected, the census was the most unpopular.3 This measure, which always aston- ishes people unaccustomed to the requirements of great central administrations, was particularly odious to the Jews. We see that already, under David, a numbering of the people provoked violent recriminations, and the menaces of the prophets.4 The census, in fact, was the basis of taxation; now taxation, to a pure theocracy, was almost an impiety. God being the sole Master whom man ought to recognize, to pay tithe to a secular sovereign was, in a manner, to put him in the place of God. Completely ignorant of the idea of the State, the Jewish theocracy only acted up to its logical induction — the negation of civil society and of all government. The money of the public treasury was accounted stolen money.5 The census ordered by Quirinus (in the year lMishnah, Sanhedrim, ix. 6; John xvi. 2; Jos., B. J., book iv., and following. 2 Acts viii. 9. Verse it leads us to suppose that Simon the ma- gician was already famous in the time of Jesus. 'Discourse of Claudius at Lyons, Tab. ii. sub fin. De Boisseau, Inscr. Ant. de Lyon, p. 136. 42 Sam. xxiv. 'Talmud of Babylon. Baba Kama, JI3 a; Shahbath, 33 &. LIFE OF JESUS. Ill 6 of the Christian era) powerfully reawakened these ideas, and caused a great fermentation. An insurrec- tion broke out in the northern provinces. One Judas, of the town of Gamala, upon the eastern shore of the Lake of Tiberias, and a Pharisee named Sadoc, by denying the lawfulness of the tax, created a numerous party, which soon broke out in open revolt.1 The fundamental maxims of this party were — that they ought to call no man "master," this title belonging to God alone ; and that liberty was better than life. Judas had, doubtless, many other principles, which Josephus, always careful not to compromise his co-religionists, designedly suppresses ; for it is impossible to under- stand how, for so simple an idea, the Jewish historian should give him a place among the philosophers of his nation, and should regard him as the founder of a fourth school, equal to those of the Pharisees, the Sad- ducees, and the Essenes. Judas was evidently the chief of a Galilean sect, deeply imbued with the Mes- sianic idea, and which became a political movement. The procurator, Coponius, crushed the sedition of the Gaulonite; but the school remained, and preserved its chiefs. Under the leadership of Menahem, son of the founder, and of a certain Eleazar, his relative, we find them again very active in the last contests of the Jews against the Romans.2 Perhaps Jesus saw this Judas, whose idea of the Jewish revolution was so different from his own ; at all events, he knew his school, and it was probably to avoid his error that he pronounced the axiom upon the penny of Caesar. Jesus, more wise, 1 Jos., Ant, xviii. i. I and 6 ; B. J., u. viii. I ; Acts v. 37. Pre- vious to Judas the Gaulonite, the Acts place another agitator, Theudas ; but this is an anachronism, the movement of Theudas took place in the year 44 of the Christian era (Jos., Ant., XX, v. t). 8Jqs., B, /,, XI. xvii. 8, and following. 112 LIFE OF JESUS. and far removed from all sedition, profited by the fault of his predecessor, and dreamed of another kingdom and another deliverance. Galilee was thus an immense furnace wherein the most diverse elements were seething.1 An extraordi- nary contempt of life, or, more properly speaking, a kind of longing for death,2 was the consequence of these agitations. Experience counts for nothing in these great fanatical movements. Algeria, at the com- mencement of the French occupation, saw arise, each spring, inspired men, who declared themselves invul- nerable, and sent by God to drive away the infidels ; the following year their death was forgotten, and their successors found no less credence. The Roman power, very stern on the one hand, yet little disposed to med- dle, permitted a good deal of liberty. Those great, brutal despotisms, terrible in repression, were not so suspicious as powers which have a faith to defend. They allowed everything up to the point when they thought it necessary to be severe. It is not recorded that Jesus was even once interfered with by the civil power, in his wandering career. Such freedom, and, above all, the happiness which Galilee enjoyed in being much less confined in the bonds of Pharisaic pedantry, gave to this district a real superiority over Jerusalem. The revolution, or, in other words, the belief in the Messiah, caused here a general fermentation. Men deemed themselves on the eve of the great renovation ; the Scriptures, tortured into divers meanings, fostered the most colossal hopes. In each line of the simple 'Luke xiii. I. The Galilean movement of Judas, son of Heze- ldah, does not appear to have been of a religious character; per- haps, however, its character has been misrepresented by Josephus (Ant., xvn. x. 5), 3 Jos., Ant., xvl vi. 2, 3 ; xvm. i. 1. LIFE OF JESUS. 113 writings of the Old Testament they saw the assurance, and, in a manner, the programme of the future reign, which was to bring peace to the righteous, and to seal forever the work of God. From all time, this division into two parties, opposed in interest and spirit, had been for the Hebrew nation a principle which contributed to their moral growth. Every nation called to high destinies ought to be a little world in itself, including opposite poles. Greece presented, at a few leagues* distance from each other, Sparta and Athens — to a superficial observer, the two antipodes ; but, in reality, rival sisters, necessary to one another. It was the same with Judea. Less brilliant in one sense than the development of Jerusalem, that of the North was on the whole much more fertile; the greatest achievements of the Jewish people have always proceeded thence. A complete absence of the love of Nature, bordering upon something dry, narrow, and ferocious, has stamped all the works purely Hierosoly- mite with a degree of grandeur, though sad, arid, and repulsive. With its solemn doctors, its insipid canon- ists, its hypocritical and atrabilious devotees, Jerusalem has not conquered humanity. The North has given to the world the simple Shunammite, the humble Canaan- it e, the impassioned Magdalene, the good foster-father Joseph, and the Virgin Mary. The North alone has made Christianity; Jerusalem, on the contrary, is the true home of that obstinate Judaism which, founded by the Pharisees, and fixed by the Talmud, has tra- versed the Middle Ages, and come down to us. A beautiful external nature tended to produce a "much less austere spirit — a spirit less sharply monothe- istic, if I may use the expression, which imprinted a charming and idyllic character on all the dreams of 114 LIFE OF JESUS. Galilee. The saddest country in the world is perhaps the region round about Jerusalem. Galilee, on the con- trary, was a very green, shady, smiling district, the true home of the Song of Songs, and the songs of the well-beloved.1 During the two months of March and April, the country forms a carpet of flowers of an in- comparable variety of colors. The animals are small, and extremely gentle — delicate and lively turtle-doves, blue-birds so light that they rest on a blade of grass without bending it, crested larks which venture almost under the feet of the traveller, little river tortoises with mild and lively eyes, storks with grave and modest mien, which, laying aside all timidity, allow man to come quite near them, and seem almost to invite his approach. In no country in the world do the moun- tains spread themselves out with more harmony, or inspire higher thoughts. Jesus seems to have had a peculiar love for them. The most important acts of his divine career took place upon the mountains. It was there that he was the most inspired f it was there that he held secret communion with the ancient prophets ; and it was there that his disciples witnessed his transfiguration.3 This beautiful country has now become sad and lJos., B. /., in. iii. I. The horrible state to which the country is reduced, especially near Lake Tiberias, ought not to deceive us. These countries, now scorched, were formerly terrestrial para- dises. The baths of Tiberias, which are now a frightful rbode, were formerly the most beautiful places in Galilee (Jos., An!., xviii. ii. 3.) Josephus (Bell. Jud., in. x. 8) ...tols the beautiful trees of the plain of Gennesareth, where there is no longer a single one. Anthony the Martyr, about the year 600, >nsequently fifty years before the Mussulman invasion, still found Galilee covered with delightful plantations, and compares its fertility to that of Egypt (Itin., § 5). *Matt. v. 1, xiv. 23 ; Luke vi. 12. •Matt. xvii. 1, and following; Mark ix. 1, and following; Luke ix. 28, and following. LIFE OF JESUS. 115 gloomy through the ever-impoverishing influence of Islamism. But still everything which man cannot de- stroy breathes an air of freedom, mildness, and tender- ness, and at the time of Jesus it overflowed with hap- piness and prosperity. The Galileans were considered energetic, brave, and laborious.1 If we except Ti- berias, built by Antipas in honor of Tiberius (about the year 15), in the Roman style,2 Galilee had no large towns. The country was, nevertheless, well peopled, covered with small towns and large villages, and culti- vated in all parts with skill.8 From the ruins which remain of its ancient splendor, we can trace an agricul- tural people, no way gifted in art, caring little for lux- ury, indifferent to the beauties of form and exclusively idealistic. The country abounded in fresh streams and in fruits ; the large farms were shaded with vines and fig-trees; the gardens were filled with trees bearing apples, walnuts, and pomegranates.4 The wine was excellent, if we may judge by that which the Jew : still obtain at Safed, and they drank much of it.5 This contented and easily satisfied life was not like the gross materialism of our peasantry, the coarse pleasures of agricultural Normandy, or the heavy mirth of the Flemish. It spiritualized itself in ethereal dreams — in a kind of poetic mysticism, blending heaven and earth. ^os., B. /., in. iii. 2, 2 Jos., Ant., xviii. ii. 2 ; B. J., n. ix. 1 ; Vita, 12, 13, 64. 'Jos., P. /., in. iii. 7. 'We may judge cf this by some enclosures in the neighborhood of Naz -eth. Cf. Song of Solomon ii. 3, 5, 13, iv. 13, vi. 6, 10, vii. 8, 12, viii. 2, 5 ; Anton. Martyr, /. c. The aspect of the great farms is still well preserved in the south of the country of Tyre (ancient tribe of Asher). Traces of the ancient Palestinian agri- culture, with its troughs threshing-floors, wine-pre?ses, mills, &c., cut in the rock, are found at every step. 6Matt. ix. 17, xi. 19; Mark ii. 22: Luke v. 37, vii. 34; John ii. 3, and following. 116 LIFE OF JESUS. Leave the austere Baptist in his desert of Judea to preach penitence, to inveigh without ceasing, and to live on locusts in the company of jackals. Why should the companions of the bridegroom fast while the bride- groom is with them ? Joy will be a part of the king- dom of God. Is she not the daughter of the humble in heart, of the men of good will? The whole history of infant Christianity has become in this manner a delightful pastoral. A Messiah at the marriage festival — the courtezan and the good Zac- cheus called to his feasts — the founders of the kingdom of heaven like a bridal procession ; that is what Galilee has boldly offered, and what the world has accepted. Greece has drawn pictures of human life by sculpture and by charming poetry, but always without back- grounds or distant receding perspectives. In Galilee were wanting the marble, the practiced workmen, the exquisite and refined language. But Galilee has cre- ated the most sublime ideal for the popular imagina- tion; for behind its idyl moves the fate of humanity, and the light which illumines its picture is the sun of the kingdom of God. Jesus lived and grew amidst these enchanting scenes. From his infancy, he went almost annually to the feast at Jerusalem.1 The pilgrimage was a sweet solemnity for the provincial Jews. Entire series of psalms were consecrated to celebrate the happiness of thus journey- ing in family companionship2 during several days in the spring across the hills and valleys, each one having in prospect the splendors of Jerusalem, the solemnities of the sacred courts, and the joy of brethren dwelling to- gether in unity.3 The route which Jesus ordinarily 'Luke ii. 41. *Luke ii. 42-44. 3See especially Ps. lxxxiv., cxxii., cxxxiii. (Vulg., lxxxiii., cxxi., cxxxii). LIFE OF JESUS. 1X1 took in these journeys was that which is followed to this day through Ginaea and Shechem.1 From She- chem to Jerusalem the journey is very tiresome. But the neighborhood of the old sanctuaries of Shiloh and Bethel, near which the travellers pass, keeps their inter- est alive. Ain-el-Haramie,2 the last halting-place, is a charming and melancholy spot, and few impressions equal that experienced on encamping there for the night. The valley is narrow and sombre, and a dark stream issues from the rocks, full of tombs, which form its banks. It is, I think, the 'Valley of tears," or of dropping waters, which is described as one of the sta- tions on the way in the delightful Eighty-fourth Psalm,3 and which became the emblem of life for the sad and sweet mysticism of the Middle Ages. Early the next day they would be at Jerusalem ; such an ex- pectation even now sustains the caravan, rendering the night short and slumber light. These journeys, in which the assembled nation ex- changed its ideas, and which were almost always cen- tres of great agitation, placed Jesus in contact with the mind of his countrymen, and no doubt inspired him whilst still young with a lively antipathy for the defects of the official representatives of Judaism. It is sup- posed that very early the desert had great influence on his development, and that he made long stays there.4 But the God he found in the desert was not his God. It was rather the God of Job, severe and terrible, ac- aLuke ix. 51-53, xvii. 11 ; John iv. 4; Jos., Ant., xx. vi. 1 ; B. /., 11. xii. 3 ; Vita, 52. Often, however, the pilgrims came by Peraea, in order to avoid Samaria, where they incurred dangers ; Matt xix. 1 ; Mark x. 1. 2 According to Josephus {Vita, 52) it was three days' journey. But the stage from Shechem to Jerusalem was generally divided into two. 3lxxxiii. according to the Vulgate, v. 7. *Luke iv. 42, v. l6« 118 LIFE OF. JESUS. countable to no one. Sometimes Satan came to tempt him. He returned, then, into his beloved Galilee, and found again his heavenly Father in the midst of the green hills and the clear fountains — and among the crowds of women and children, who, with joyous soul and the song of angels in their hearts, awaited the sal- vation of Israel. n CHAPTER V. THE FIRST SAYINGS OF JESUS HIS IDEAS OF A DIVINE FATHER AND OF A PURE RELIGION FIRST DISCIPLES. Joseph died before his son had taken any public part. Mary remained, in a manner, the head of the family, and this explains why her son, when it was wished to distinguish him from others of the same name, was most frequently called the "son of Mary."1 It seems that having, by the death of her husband, been left friendless at Nazareth, she withdrew to Cana,2 from which she may have come originally. Cana3 was a little town at from two to two and a half hours' jour- ney from Nazareth, at the foot of the mountains which bound the plain of Asochis on the' north.4 The pros- pect, less grand than at Nazareth, extends over all the plain, and is bounded in the most picturesque manner by the mountains of Nazareth and the hills of Sep- phoris. Jesus appears to have resided some time in this place. Here he probably passed a part of his youth, and here his greatness first revealed itself.5 He followed the trade of his father, which was that 'This is the expression of Mark vi. 3 : cf. Matt. xiii. 55. Mark- did not know Joseph. John and Luke, on the contrary, prefer the expression "son of Joseph." Luke iii. 23, iv. 22; John i, 45, iv. 42. 2John ii. 1, iv. 46. John alone is informed on this point. 3I admit, as probable, the idea which identifies Cana of Galilee with Kana el DjHil. We may, nevertheless, attach value to the arguments for Kefr Kenna, a place an hour or an hour and a half's journey N.N.E. of Nazareth. *ttow El-Buttauf. "John ii. 11, iv. 46. One or two disciples were of Cana, John xxi. 2 ; Matt. x. 4 ; Mark iii. 18. 119 H8 LIFE OF JESUS. of a carpenter.1 This was not in any degree humiliat- ing or grievous. The Jewish customs required that a man devoted to intellectual work should learn a trade. The most celebrated doctors did so;2 thus St. Paul, whose education had been so carefully tended, was a tent-maker.3 Jesus never married. All his power of love centred upon that which he regarded as his celes- tial vocation. The extremely delicate feeling toward women, which we remark in him, was not separated from the exclusive devotion which he had for his mis- sion. Like Francis d'Assisi and Francis de Sales, he treated as sisters the women who were loved of the same work as himself; he had his St. Clare, his Frances de Chantal. It is, however, probable that these loved him more than the work ; he was, no doubt, more be- loved than loving. Thus, as often happens in very elevated natures, tenderness of the heart was trans- formed in him into an infinite sweetness, a vague poetry, and a universal charm. His relations, free and intimate, but of an entirely moral kind, with women of doubtful character, are also explained by the passion which attached him to the glory of his Father, and which made him jealously anxious for all beautiful creatures who could contribute to it.4 What was the progress of the ideas of Jesus during this obscure period of his life ? Through what medita- tions did he enter upon the prophetic career ? We have no information on these points, his history having come to us in scattered narratives, without exact chro- nology. But the development of character is every- ^Mark vi. 3 ; Justin, Dial, cum Try ph., 88. 2For example, "Rabbi Johanan, the shoemaker, Rabbi Isaac, the blacksmith." 3Acts xviii. 3. 4Luke vii. 37, and following; John iv. 7, and following; viii. 3, and following. LIFE OF JESUS. 121 where the same ; and there is no doubt that the growth of so powerful individuality as that of Jesus obeyed very rigorous laws. A high conception of the Divin- ity— which he did not owe to Judaism, and which seems to have been in all its parts the creation of his great mind — was in a manner the source of all his power. It is essential here that we put aside the ideas familiar to us, and the discussions in which little minds exhaust themselves. In order properly to understand the precise character of the piety of Jesus, we must for- get all that is placed between the gospel and ourselves. Deism and Pantheism have become the two poles of theology. The paltry discussions of scholasticism, the dryness of spirit of Descartes, the deep-rooted irrelig- ion of the eighteenth century, by lessening God, and by limiting Him, in a manner, by the exclusion of everything which is not His very self, have stifled in the breast of modern rationalism all fertile ideas of the Divinity. If God, in fact, is a personal being outside of us, he who believes himself to have peculiar relations with God is a "visionary," and as the physical and physiological sciences have shown us that all super- natural visions are illusions, the logical Deist finds it impossible to understand the great beliefs of the past Pantheism, on the other hand, in suppressing the Divine personality, is as far as it can be from the living God of the ancient religions. Were the men who have best comprehended God — Cakya-Mouni, Plato, St. Paul, St. Francis d'Assisi, and St. Augustine (at some periods of his fluctuating life) — Deists or Pan- theists? Such a question has no meaning. The physi- cal and metaphysical proofs of the existence of God were quite indifferent to them. They felt the Divine within themselves. We must place Jesus in the first 122 LIFE OF JESUS. rank of this great family of the true sons of God. Jesus had no visions ; God did not speak to him as to one outside of Himself; God was in him; he felt him- self with God, and he drew from his heart all he said of his Father. He lived in the bosom of God by constant communication with Him; he saw Him not, but he understood Him, without need of the thunder and the burning bush of Moses, of the revealing tempest of Job, of the oracle of the old Greek sages, of the familiar genius of Socrates, or of the angel Gabriel of Mahomet. The imagination and the hallucination of a St. Theresa, for example, are useless here. The intoxica- tion of the Soufi proclaiming himself identical with God is also quite another thing. Jesus never once gave utterance to the sacrilegious idea that he was God. He believed himself to be in direct communion with God; he believed himself to be the Son of God. The highest consciousness of God which has existed in the bosom of humanity was that of Jesus. We understand, on the other hand, how Jesus, start- ing with such a disposition of spirit, could never be a speculative philosopher like Cakya-Mouni. Nothing is further from scholastic theology than the Gospel.1 The speculations of the Greek fathers on the Divine essence proceed from an entirely different spirit. God, conceived simply as Father, was all the theology of Jesus. And this was not with him a theoretical prin- ciple, a doctrine more or less proved, which he sought to inculcate in others. He did not argue with his dis- lThe discourses which the fourth Gospel attributes to Jesus contain some germs of theology. But these discourses being in absolute contradiction with those of the synoptical Gospels, which represent, without any doubt, the primitive Logia, ought to count simply as documents of apostolic history, and not as elements of the life of Jesus, LIFE OP JESUS. 12.3 ciples;1 he demanded from them no effort of attention. He did not preach his opinions; he preached himself. Very great and very disinterested minds often present, associated with much elevation, that character of per- petual attention to themselves, and extreme personal susceptibility, which, in general, is peculiar to women.2 Their conviction that God is in them, and occupies Himself perpetually with them, is so strong, that they have no fear of obtruding themselves upon others ; our reserve, and our respect for the opinion of others, which is a part of our weakness, could not belong to them. This exaltation of self is not egotism; for such men, possessed by their idea, give their lives freely, in order to seal their work; it is the identification of self with the object it has embraced, carried to its utmost limit. It is regarded as vain-glory by those who see in the new teaching only the personal phantasy of the founder ; but it is the finger of God to those who see the result. The fool stands side by side here with the inspired man, only the fool never succeeds. It has not yet been given to insanity to influence seriously the progress of humanity. Doubtless, Jesus did not attain at first this high affirmation of himself. But it is probable that, from the first, he regarded his relationship with God as that of a son with his father. This was his great act of originality; in this he had nothing in common with his race.3 Neither the Jew nor the Mussulman has under- stood this delightful theology of love. The God of lSee Matt. ix. 9, and other analogous accounts. 'See, for example, John xxi, 15, and following. 'The great soul of Philo is in sympathy here, as on 90 many other points, with that of Jesus. De Confus. Ling., § 14 ; De Migr. Abr., Ii; De Somniis, ii., §41; De Agric. Noe, 8 12; De Muta- Hone Nominum, § 4. But Philo is scarcely a Jew in spirit. 1*4 LIFE OF JESUS. Jesus is not that tyrannical master who kills us, damns us, or saves us, according to His pleasure. The God of Jesus is our Father. We hear Him in listening to the gentle inspiration which cries within us, "Abba, Father."1 The God of Jesus is not the partial despot who has chosen Israel for His people, and specially pro- tects them. He is the God of humanity. Jesus was not a patriot, like the Maccabees; or a theocrat, like Judas the Gaulonite. Boldly raising himself above the prejudices of his nation, he established the universal fatherhood of God. The Gaulonite maintained that we should die rather than give to another than God the name of "Master ;" Jesus left this name to any one who liked to take it, and reserved for God a dearer name. Whilst he accorded to the powerful of the earth, who were to him representatives of force, a respect full of irony, he proclaimed the supreme consolation — the re- course to the Father which each one has in heaven — and the true kingdom of God, which each one bears in his heart. This name of "kingdom of God," or "kingdom of heaven,"2 was the favorite term of Jesus to express the revolution which he brought into the world.3 Like almost all the Messianic terms, it came from the book of Daniel. According to the author of this extraordi- nary book, the four profane empires, destined to fall, were to be succeeded by a fifth empire, that of the saints, which should last forever.4 This reign of God ^alatians iv. 6. 3The word ''heaven" in the rabbinical language of that time is synonymous with the name of "God," which they avoided pro- nouncing. Compare Matt. xxi. 25 ; Luke xv. 18, xx. 4. sThis expression occurs on each page of the synoptical Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and St. Paul. If it only appears once in John (iii. 3, 5), it is because the discourses related in the fourth Gospel are far from representing the true words of Jesus. 4Dan. ii. 44, vii. 13, 14, 22, 27. LIFE OF JESUS. 125 upon earth naturally led to the most diverse interpreta- tions. To Jewish theology, the "kingdom of God" is most frequently only Judaism itself- — the true religion, the monotheistic worship, piety.1 In the later periods of his life, Jesus believed that this reign would be real- ized in a material form by a sudden renovation of the world. But doubtless this was not his first idea.2 • The admirable moral which he draws from the idea of God as Father, is not that of enthusiasts who believe the world is near its end, and who prepare themselves by asceticism for a chimerical catastrophe; it is that of men who have lived, and still would live. "The king- dom of God is within you," said he to those who sought with subtlety for external signs.3 The realistic conception of the Divine advent was but a cloud, a transient error, which his death has made us forget. The Jesus who founded the true kingdom of God, the kingdom of the meek and the humble, was the Jesus of early life4 — of those chaste and pure days when the voice of his Father re-echoed within him in clearer tones. It was then for some months, perhaps a year, that God truly dwelt upon the earth. The voice of the young carpenter suddenly acquired an extraordinary sweetness. An infinite charm was exhaled from his person, and those who had seen him up to that time no longer recognized him.5 He had not yet any disciples, ^lishnah, Berakoth, ii. i, 3; Talmud of Jerusalem, Berakoth, ii. 2; Kiddushin, i. 2; Talm. of Bab., Berakoth, 15 a; Mekilta, 42 b; Siphra, 170 b. The expression appears often in the Me- drashim. 2Matt. vi. 33, xii. 28, xix. 12; Mark xii. 34; Luke xii. 31. 3Luke xvii. 20, 21. *The grand theory of the revelation of the Son of Man is in fact reserved, in the synoptics, for the chapters which precede the narrative of the Passion. The first discourses, especially in Mat- thew, are entirely moral. 6Matt. xiii. 54 and following; Mark vi. 2 and following; John v.43- ne LIFE OF JESUS. and the group which gathered around him was neither a sect nor a school; but a common spirit, a sweet and penetrating influence was felt. His amiable character, accompanied doubtless by one of those lovely faces1 which sometimes appear in the Jewish race, threw around him a fascination from which no one in the midst of these kindly and simple populations could escape. Paradise would, in fact, have been brought to earth if the ideas of the young Master had not far tran- scended the level of ordinary goodness beyond which it has not been found possible to raise the human race. The brotherhood of men, as sons of God, and the moral consequences which result therefrom, were deduced with exquisite feeling. Like all the rabbis of the time, Jesus was little inclined toward consecutive reasonings, and clothed his doctrine in concise aphorisms, and in an expressive form, at times enigmatical and strange.2 Some of these maxims come from the books of the Old Testament. Others were the thoughts of more mod- ern sages, especially those of Antigonus of Soco, Jesus, son of Sirach, and Hillel, which had reached him, not from learned study, but as oft-repeated proverbs. The synagogue was rich in very happily expressed sen- tences, which formed a kind of current proverbial lit- erature.3 Jesus adopted almost all this oral teaching, but imbued it with a superior spirit.4 Exceeding the lThe tradition of the plainness of Jesus (Justin. Dial, cum Tryph., 85, 88, 100) springs from a desire to see realized in him a pretended Messianic trait (Isa. liii. 2). ^The Logia of St. Matthew joins several of these axioms to- gether, to form lengthened discourses. But the fragmentary form makes itself felt notwithstanding. 8The sentences of the Jewish doctors of the time are collected in the little book entitled, Pirkk Aboth. The comparisons will be made afterward as they present them- selves. It nas been sometimes supposed that— the compilation of LIFE OF JESTTS. 127 duties laid down by the Law and the elders, he de- manded perfection. All the virtues of humility — for- giveness, charity, abnegation, and self denial— virtues which with good reason have been called Christian, if we mean by that that they have been truly preached by Christ, were in this first teaching, though undeveloped. As to justice, he was content with repeating the well- known axiom — "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them."1 But this old, though somewhat selfish wisdom, did not satisfy him. He went to excess, and said — "Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also."2 "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee."3 "Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, pray for them that persecute you."4 "Judge not, that ye be not judged."5 "Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven."6 "Be ye therefore merciful as your Father also is merciful."7 "It is more blessed to give than to receive."8 "Who- the Talmud being later than that of the Gospels — parts may have been borrowed by the Jewish compilers from the Christian moral- ity. But this is inadmissible — a wall of separation existed be- tween the Church and the Synagogue. The Christian and Jewish literature had scarcely any influence on one another before the thirteenth century. xMatt. vii. 12; Luke vi. 31. This axiom is in the book of Tobit, iv. 16. Hillel used it habitually (Talm. of Bab., Shabbath, 31 a), and declared, like Jesus, that it was the sum of the Law. *Matt. v. 39, and following: Luke vi. 29. Compare Jeremiah, Lamentations iii. 30. sMatt. v. 29, 30, xviii. 9; Mark ix. 46. *Matt. v. 44 ; Luke vi. 27. Compare Talmud of Babylon, Shab- bath, 88 b; Joma, 23 a. 6Matt. vii. 1 ; Luke vi. 37. Compare Talmud of Babylon, Kethu- both, 105 b. aLuke vi. 37. Compare Lev. xix. 18; Prov. xx. 22; Ecclesias- ticus xxviii. 1, and following. 'Luke vi. 36; Siphre, 51 b (Sultzbach, 1802). 8 A saying related in Acts xx. 35. 12a LIFE OF JESUS. soever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted."1 Upon alms, pity, good works, kindness, peaceful- ness, and complete disinterestedness of heart, he had little to add to the doctrine of the synagogue.2 But he placed upon them an emphasis full of unction, which made the old maxims appear new. Morality is not composed of more or less well-expressed principles. The poetry which makes the precept loved, is more than the precept itself, taken as an abstract truth. Now it cannot be denied that these maxims borrowed by Jesus from his predecessors, produce quite a differ- ent effect in the Gospel to that in the ancient Law, in the Pirke Aboth, or in the Talmud. It is neither the ancient Law nor the Talmud which has conquered and changed the world. Little original in itself — if we mean by that that one might recompose it almost en- tirely by the aid of older maxims — the morality of the Gospels remains, nevertheless, the highest creation of human conscience — the most beautiful code of perfect life that amr moralist has traced. Jesus did not speak against the Mosaic law, but it is clear that he saw its insufficiency, and allowed it to be seen that he did so. He repeated unceasingly that more must be done than the ancient sages had com- manded.3 He forbade the least harsh word;4 he pro- hibited divorce,5 and all swearing;6 he censured re- xMatt. xxiii. 12; Luke xiv. 11, xviii. 14. The sentences quoted by St. Jerome from the "Gospel according to the Hebrews" (Comment, in Epist. ad Ephes., v. 4 ; in Ezek. xviii. ; Dial. adv. Pelag., iii. 2), are imbued with the same spirit. 2 Deut. xxiv., xxv., xxvi., &c. ; Isa. lviii. 7; Prov. xix. 17; Pirke Aboth, i. ; Talmud of Jerusalem, Peak, i. 1 ; Talmud of Babylon, Shabbath, 63 o. •Matt. v. 20, and following. 4Matt. v. 22. 6Matt. v. 31, and following. Compare Talmud of Babylon, San- faedrim, 22 a. 6Matt. v. 33, and following. LIFE OF JESUS. 129 vcnge;1 he condemned usury;2 he considered voluptu- ous desire as criminal as adultery;3 he insisted upon a universal forgiveness of injuries.4 The motive on which he rested these maxims of exalted charity was always the same . . . "That ye may be the chil- dren of your Father which is in heaven : for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the good. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect/'5 A pure worship, a religion without priests and exter- nal observances, resting entirely on the feelings of the heart, on the imitation of God,6 on the direct relation of the conscience with the heavenly Father, was the result of these principles. Jesus never shrank from this bold conclusion, which made him a thorough revo- lutionist in the very centre of Judaism. Why should there be mediators between man and his Father? As God only sees the heart, of what good are these purifi- cations, these observances relating only to the body?7 Even tradition, a thing so sacred to the Jews, is noth- ing compared to sincerity.8 The hypocrisy of the Pharisees, who, in praying, turned their heads to see if they were observed, who gave their alms with ostenta- 1Matt. v. 38, and following. 2Matt. v. 42. The Law prohibited it also (Dent. xv. 7, 8). but less formally, and custom authorized it (Luke vii. 41, and fol- lowing). sMatt. xxvii. 28. Compare Talmud, Massiket Kalla (edit. Furth, 1793), fol. 34 b. 4Matt. v. 23, and following. 6Matt. v. 45, and following. Compare Lev. xi. 44, xix. 2. F •Compare Philo, Dc Migr. Ab-r., § 23 and 24; De Vita Content p., the whole. 'Matt. xy. 11, and following; Mark vii. 6, and following. •Mark vii. 6, and following. 130 LIFE OF JESUS. cion, and put marks upon their garments, that they might be recognized as pious persons — all these grimaces of false devotion disgusted him. "They have their recompense," said he; "but thou, when thou doest thine alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth, that thy alms may be in secret, and thy Father, which seeth in secret. Himself shall reward thee openly."1 "And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues, and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet ; and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly. But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do : for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask Him."2 He did not affect any external signs of asceticism, contenting himself with praying, or rather meditating, upon the mountains, and in the solitary places, where man has always sought God.3 This high idea of the relations of man with God, of which so few minds, even after him, have been capable, is summed up in a prayer which he taught to his disciples :4 "Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name ; thy kingdom come ; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation; 1Matt. vi. i, and following. Compare Ecclesiasticus xvii. 18, xxix. 15 ; Talm. of Bab., Chagigah, 5 a; Baba Bathra, 9 b. 3Matt. vi. 5-8. 8Matt. xiv. 23; Luke iv. 42, v. 16, vi. 12, 4Matt. vi. 9, and following; Luke xi. 2, and following. LIFE OF JESUS. 131 deliver us from the evil one."1 He insisted particularly upon the idea, that the heavenly Father knows better than we what we need, and that we almost sin against Him in asking Him for this or that particular thing.2 Jesus in this only carried out the consequences of the great principles which Judaism had established, but which the official classes of the nation tended more and more to despise. The Greek and Roman prayers were almost always mere egotistical verbiage. Never had Pagan priest said to the faithful, "If thou bring thy offering to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee; leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled with thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift."3 Alone in antiquity, the Jewish prophets, especially Isaiah, had, in their antipathy to the priesthood, caught a glimpse of the true nature of the worship man owes to God. "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me ; I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts ; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats. . : . Incense is an abomination unto me : for your hands are full of blood ; cease to do evil, learn to do well, seek judgment, and then come."4 In later times, certain doctors, Simeon the just,5 Jesus, son of Sirach,6 Hillel,7 almost reached this point, and declared that the sum of the Law was righteousness. Philo, in the Judaeo- Egyptian world, attained at the same time as Jesus 1i. e., the devil. 2Luke xi. 5, and following. 3 Matt. v. 23, 24. 4Isaiah i. n, and following. Compare ibid., Iviii. entirely; Rosea vi. 6; Malachi L 10, and following. bPirke Aboth, i. 2. 6Ecclesiasticus xxxv. 1, and following. 7Talm. of Jerus.. Pesachim, vi. 1. Talm. of Bab., the same treatise 66 a; Shabbath, 31 a. 133 LIFE OP JESUS. ideas of a high moral sanctity, the consequence of which was the disregard of the observances of the Law.1 Shemaiia and Abtalion also more than once proved themselves to be very liberal casuists.2 Rabbi Johanan ere long placed works of mercy above even the study of the Law P Jesus alone, however, proclaimed these principles in an effective manner. Never has any one been less a priest than Jesus, never a greater enemy of forms, which stifle religion under the pretext of pro- tecting it. By this we are all his disciples and his suc- cessors ; by this he has laid the eternal foundation-stone of true religion ; and if religion is essential to human- ity, he has by this deserved the Divine rank the world has accorded to him. An absolutely new idea, the idea of a worship founded on purity of heart, and on human brotherhood, through him entered into the world — an idea so elevated, that the Christian Church ought to make it its distinguishing feature, but an idea which, in our days, only few minds are capable of embodying. An exquisite sympathy with Nature furnished him each moment with expressive images. Sometimes a remarkable ingenuity, which we call wit, adorned his aphorisms; at other times, their liveliness consisted in the happy use of popular proverbs. "How wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye, and then thou shalt see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."4 xQuod Deus Immut., § i. and 2; De Abrahamo, § 22; Quis Rerum Divin. Hceres, § 13, and following; 55, 58, and following; De Profugis, § 7 and 8; Quod Omnis Ptobus Liber, entirely; Dc Vita Contemp., entirely. 2Talm. of Bab., Pesachim, 67 b. 3Talmud of Jerus^ Piah, i. 1. *Matt. vii. 4, 5. Compare Talmud of Babylon, Baba Bathra, 15 b, Erachin, 16 b. LIFE OF JESUS. 133 These lessons, long hidden in the heart of the young Master, soon gathered around him a few disciples. The spirit of the time favored small churches; it was the period of the Essenes or Therapeutse. Rabbis, each having his distinctive teaching, Shemaia, Abtal- ion, Hillel, Shammai, Judas the Gaulonite, Gamaliel, and many others, whose maxims form the Talmud,1 appeared on all sides. They wrote very little; the Jewish doctors of this time did not write books ; every- thing was done by conversations, and in public lessons, to which it was sought to give a form easily remem- bered.2 The proclamation by the young carpenter of Nazareth of these maxims, for the most part already generally known, but which, thanks to him, were to regenerate the world, was therefore no striking event It was only one rabbi more (it is true, the most charm- ing of all), and around him some young men, eager to hear him, and thirsting for knowledge. It requires time to command the attention of men. As yet there were no Christians; though true Christianity was founded, and, doubtless, it was never more perfect than at this first period. Jesus added to it nothing durable afterward. Indeed, in one sense, he compromised it; for every movement, in order to triumph, must make sacrifices ; we never come from the contest of life un- scathed. To conceive the good, in fact, is not sufficient; it must be made to succeed amongst men. To accom- plish this, less pure paths must be followed. Certainly, if the Gospel was confined to some chapters of Matthew and Luke, it would be more perfect, and would not now *See especially Pirke Aboth, eh. i. £The Talmud, a resume of this vast movement of the schools, was scarcely commenced till the second century of our era. 134 LIFE OF JESUS. be open to so many objections ; but would Jesus have converted the world without miracles? If he had died at the period of his career we have now reached, there would not have been in his life a single page to wound us ; but, greater in the eyes of God, he would have re- mained unknown to men ; he would have been lost in the crowd of great unknown spirits, himself the great- est of all ; the truth would not have been promulgated, and the world would not have profited from the great moral superiority with which his Father had endowed him. Jesus, son of Sirach, and Hillel, had uttered aphorisms almost as exalted as those of Jesus. Hillel, however, will never be accounted the true founder of Christianity. In morals, as in art, precept is nothing, practice is everything. The idea which is hidden in a picture of Raphael is of little moment ; it is the picture itself which is prized. So, too, in morals, truth is but little prized when it is a mere sentiment, and only at- tains its full value when realized in the world as fact. Men of indifferent morality have written very good maxims. Very virtuous men, on the other hand, have done nothing to perpetuate in the world the tradition of virtue. The palm is his who has been mighty both in words and in works, who has discerned the good, and at the price of his blood has caused its triumph. Jesus, from this double point of view, is without equal ; his glory remains entire, and will ever be renewed. CHAPTER VI. JOHN THE BAPTIST — VISIT OF JESUS TO JOHN, AND HIS ABODE IN THE DESERT OF JUDEA — ADOPTION OF THE BAPTISM OF JOHN. An extraordinary man, whose position, from the absence of documentary evidence, remains to us in some degree enigmatical, appeared about this time, and was unquestionably to some extent connected with Jesus. This connection tended rather to make the young prophet of Nazareth deviate from his path ; but it suggested many important accessories to his religious institution, and, at all events, furnished a very strong authority to his disciples in recommending their Mas- ter in the eyes of a certain class of Jews. About the year 28 of our era (the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius) there spread throughout Pales- tine the reputation of a certain Johanan, or John, a young ascetic full of zeal and enthusiasm. John was of the priestly race,1 and born, it seems, at Juttah near Hebron, or at Hebron itself.2 Hebron, the patriarchal city par excellence, situated at a short distance from the desert of Judea, and within a few hours' journey of the great desert of Arabia, was at this period what it is to- *Luke i. 5; passage from the Gospel of the Ebionites, preserved by Epiphanius, {Adv. Hoer., xxx. 13.) *Luke i. 39. It has been suggested, not without probability, that "the city of Juda" mentioned in this passage of Luke, is the town of Jutta^ (Josh. xv. 5?, xxi. 16). Robinson (Biblical Researches, i. 494, ii. 206) has discovered this Jutta, still bearing the same name, at two hours' journey south of Hebron. 135 136 LIFE OF JESUS. day — one of the bulwarks of Semitic ideas, in their most austere form. From his infancy, John was Nazir — that is to say, subjected by vow to certain ab- stinences.1 The desert by which he was, so to speak, surrounded, early attracted him.2 He led there the life of a Yogi of India, clothed with skins or stuffs of camel's hair, having for food only locusts and wild honey.3 A certain number of disciples were grouped around him, sharing his life and studying his severe doctrine. We might imagine ourselves transported to the banks of the Ganges, if particular traits had not revealed in this recluse the last descendant of the great prophets of Israel. From the time that the Jewish nation had begun to reflect upon its destiny with a kind of despair, the imagination of the people had reverted with much com- placency to the ancient prophets. Now, of all the per- sonages of the past, the remembrance of whom came like the dreams of a troubled night to awaken and agi- tate the people, the greatest was Elias. This giant of the prophets, in his rough solitude of Carmel, sharing the life of savage beasts, dwelling in the hollows of the rocks, whence he came like a thunderbolt, to make and unmake kings, had become, by successive transforma- tions, a sort of superhuman being, sometimes visible, sometimes invisible, and as one who had not tasted death. It was generally believed that Elias would re- turn and restore Israel.4 The austere life which he had led, the terrible remembrances he had left behind 'Luke i. 15. 3Luke i. 80. sMatt. iii. 4 ; Mark i. 6 ; fragm. of the Gospel of the Ebionites, in Epiph., Adv. Ha?r., xxx. 13. i *MalachLiv. 5, 6; (iii. 23, 24, according to the Vulg.) ; Ecclesi- asticus xlviii. 10; Matt. xvi. 14. xvii. 10, and following; Mark vi. 15, viii. 28, ix. 10, and following; Luke ix. 8, 19; John i. 21, 25, LIFE OF JESUS. 13? him—the impression of which is still powerful in the East1— the sombre image which, even in our own time causes trembling and death— all this mythology, full of vengeance and terror, vividly struck the mind of the people, and stamped as with a birth-mark all the crea- tions of the popular mind. Whoever aspired to act powerfully upon the people, must imitate Elias; and, as solitary life had been the essential characteristic of this prophet, they were accustomed to conceive "the man of God" as a hermit. They imagined that all the holy personages had had their days of penitence, of solitude, and of austerity.2 The retreat to the desert thus be- came the condition and the prelude of high destinies. No doubt this thought of imitation had occupied John's mind.3 The anchorite life, so opposed to the spirit of the ancient Jewish people, and with which the vows, such as those of the Nazirs and the Rechabites, had no relation, pervaded all parts of Judea. The Essenes or Therapeutse were grouped near the birth- place of John, on the eastern shores of the Dead Sea.* It was imagined that the chiefs of sects ought to be recluses, having rules and institutions of their own, like the founders of religious orders. The teachers of the young were also at times species of anchorites,5 some- what resembling the gourous* of Brahminism. In fact, might there not in this be a remote influence of the mounts of India ? Perhaps some of those wander- ing Buddhist monks who overran the world, as the first from^r^^ °f St Jean d'Acre' nearly died LTn Tnfhl «• f mg \mun %^^> standing erect on his moun- Sth i vP.1CiUuesJ0f ^ Chrlsti*n churches, he is surrounded 2tlTii i he MussuImans dread him, 8 Luke i. 17. 'Joseohuf \rf?h V' I7; Epiph" £dv- Ha>r" xix 1 an<* 2. josepnus, I U*. 3, Spiritual preceptors. 138 LIFE OF JESUS. Franciscans did in later times, preaching by their actions and converting people who knew not their lan- guage, might have turned their steps toward Judea, as they certainly did toward Syria and Babylon?1 On this point we have no certainty. Babylon had become for some time a true focus of Buddhism. Boudasp (Bodhisattva) was reputed a wise Chaldean, and the founder of Sabeism. Sabeism was, as its etymology indicates,2 baptism — that is to say, the religion of many baptisms — the origin of the sect still existing called "Christians of St. John," or Mendaites, which the Arabs call el-Mogtasila, "the Baptists,"3 It is difficult to unravel these vague analogies. The sects floating between Judaism, Christianity, Baptism, and Sabeism, which we find in the region beyond the Jordan during the first centuries of our era,4 present to criticism the most singular problem, in consequence of the confused accounts of them which have come down to us. We may believe, at all events, that many of the external practices of John, of the Essenes,5 and of the Jewish spiritual teachers of this time, were derived from influ- ences then but recently received from the far East The fundamental practice which characterized the sect *I have developed this point elsewhere. Hist. Gfoifa. des Lan- gues Simitiques, m. iv. i; Journ. Asiat., February-March, 1856. 'The Aramean word seba, origin of the name of Sabians, is synonymous with /?or?rrzC<». 8 1 have treated of this at greater length in the Journal Asiatique, Nov.-Dec, 1853, and August-Sept., 1855^ It is remarkable that the Elchasaites, a Sabian or Baptist sect, inhabited the same dis- trict as the Essenes, (the eastern bank of the Dead Sea), and were confounded with them (Epiph. Adv. Hcer., xix. 1, 2, 4, xxx. 16, 17, liii. 1, 2; Philosophumena, ix. iii. 15, 16, x. xx. 29). *See the remarks of Epiphanius on the Essenes, Hemero-Bap- tists, Nazarites, Ossenes, Nazorenes, Ebionites, Samsonites {Adv. Hcrr . books i. and ii.), and those of the author of the Philosoph- umena on the Elchasaites (books ix. and x). 'Epiph., Adv. Haer., xix., xxx., liii. LIFE OF JESUS. 139 of John, and gave it its name, has always had its centre in lower Chaldea, and constitutes a religion which is perpetuated there to the present day. This practice was baptism, or total immersion. Ab- lutions were already familiar to the Jews, as they were to all religions of the East.1 The Essenes had given them a peculiar extension.2 Baptism had become an ordinary ceremony on the introduction of proselytes into the bosom of the Jewish religion, a sort of initia- tory rite.3 Never before John the Baptist, however, had either this importance or this form been given to immersion. John had fixed the scene of his activity in that part of the desert of Judea which is in the neigh- borhood of the Dead Sea.4 At the periods when he administered baptism, he went to the banks of the Jordan,5 either to Bethany or Bethabara,6 upon the eastern shore, probably opposite to Jericho, or to a place called 2Enon, or "the Fountains,"7 near Salim, where there was much water.8 Considerable crowds, *Mark vii. 4; Jos., Ant., xvm. v. 2; Justin, Dial, cum Tryph., 17, 29, 80; Epiph., Adv. Hcer., xvii. 2Jos., B. J., 11., viii. 5, 7, 9, 13- 3Mishnah, Pesachim, viii. 8; Talmud of Babylon, Jebamoth, 46 b; Kerithuth, 9 a; Aboda Zara, 57 a; Massiket Gerint (edit. Kirchheim, 1851), pp. 38-40. 4Matt. iii. 1 ; Mark i. 4. 6Luke iii. 3. 6John i. 28, iii. 26. AH the manuscripts say Bethany; but, as no one knows of Bethany in these places, Origen (Comment, in Joann., vi. 24) has proposed to substitute Bethabara, and his cor- rection has been generally accepted. The two words have, more- over, analogous meanings, and seem to indicate a place where there was a ferry-boat to cross the river. nJEnon is the Chaldean plural, Mnawan, "fountains." 8John iii. 23. The locality of this place is doubtful. The cir- cumstance mentioned by the evangelist would lead us to believe that it was not very near the Jordan. Nevertheless, the synop- tics are agreed in placing the scene of the baptisms of John on the banks of that river (Matt. iii. 6: Mark i. 5 ; Luke iii. 3). The comparison of verses 22 and 23 of chap. iii. of John, and of verses 3 and 4 of chap. iv. of the same Gospel, would lead us to believe 140 LIFE OF JESUS. especially of the tribe of Judah, hastened to him to be baptized.1 In a few months he thus became one of the most influential men in Judea, and acquired much im- portance in the general estimation. The people took him for a prophet,2 and many imagined that it was Elias who had risen again.3 The belief in these resurrections was widely spread;4 it was thought that God would raise from the tomb cer- tain of the ancient prophets to guide Israel toward its final destiny. Others held John to be the Messiah himself, although he made no such pretensions.5 The priests and the scribes, opposed to this revival of prophetism, and the constant enemies' of enthusiasts, despised him. But the popularity of the Baptist awed them, and they dared not speak against him.6 It was a victory which the ideas of the multitude gained over the priestly aristocracy. When the chief priests were compelled to declare themselves explicitly on this point, they were considerably embarrassed.7 Baptism with John was only a sign destined to make an impression, and to prepare the minds of the people for some great movement. No doubt he was possessed in the highest degree with the Messianic hope, and that his principal action was in accordance with it. "Re- that Salim was in Judea, and consequently in the oasis of Jericho, near the mouth of the Jordan ; since it would be difficult to find in any other district of the tribe of Judah a single natural basin in which any one might be totally immersed. Saint Jerome wishes to place Salim much more north, near Beth-Schean or Scythopolis. But Robinson (Bibl. Res., iii. 333) has not been able to find any- thing at these places that justifies this assertion. *Mark i. 5; Josephus, Ant., xvm. v. 2. 'Matt. xiv. 5, xxi. 26. sMatt. vi. 14; Mark vi. 15; John i. 21. *Matt. xiv. 2; Luke ix. 8. 6 Luke iii. 15, and following; John i. 20. 6Matt. xxi. 25, and following; Luke vii. 30. TMatt., he. cit. LIFE OF JESUS. Iii pent," said he, "for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."1 He announced a "great wrath," that is to say, terrible calamities which should come to pass,2 and declared that the axe was already laid at the root of the tree, and that the tree would soon be cast into the fire. He represented the Messiah with a fan in his hand, col- lecting the good wheat and burning the chaff. Re- pentance, of which baptism was the type, the giving of alms, the reformation of habits,3 were in John's view the great means of preparation for the coming events, though we do not know exactly in what light he con- ceived them. It is, however, certain that he preached with much power against the same adversaries as Jesus, against rich priests, the Pharisees, the doctors, in one word, against official Judaism; and that, like Jesus, he was specially welcomed by the despised classes.4 He made no account of the title "son of Abraham," and said that God could raise up sons unto Abraham from the stones of the road.5 It does not seem that he possessed even the germ of the great idea which led to the triumph of Jesus, the idea of a pure religion; but he powerfully served this idea in substi- tuting a private rite for the legal ceremonies which re- quired priests, as the Flagellants of the Middle Ages were the. precursors of the Reformation, by depriving the official clergy of the monopoly of the sacraments and of absolution. The general tone of his sermons was stern and severe. The expressions which he used against his adversaries appear to have been most vio- lent.6 It was a harsh and continuous invective. It is probable that he did not remain quite a stranger to 'Matt. iii. 2. JMatt. iii. 7. , 3Luke iii. 11-14; Josephus, Ant., xviii. v. 2. 4Matt. xxi. 32; Luke iii. 12-14. 5Matt. iii. 9. aMatt. iii. 7; Luke iii. 7. 142 LIFE OF JESUS. politics. Josephus, who, through his teacher Banou, wau> brought into almost direct connection with John, suggests as much by his ambiguous words,1 and the catastrophe which put an end to John's life seems to imply this. His disciples led a very austere life,2 fasted often, and affected a sad and anxious demeanor. We have at times glimpses of communism — the rich man being ordered to share all that he had with the poor.3 The poor man appeared as the one who would be specially benefited by the kingdom of God. Although the centre of John's action was Judea, his fame quickly penetrated to Galilee and reached Jesus, who, by his first discourses, had already gathered around himself a small circle of hearers. Enjoying as yet little authority, and doubtless impelled by the desire to see a teacher whose instruction had so much in com- mon with his own, Jesus quitted Galilee and repaired with his small group of disciples to John.4 The new- lAnt. xviii. v. 2. We must observe that, when Josephus de- scribed the secret and more or less seditious doctrines of his countrymen, he suppressed everything which had reference to the Messianic beliefs, and, in order not to give umbrage to the Ro- mans, spread over these doctrines a vulgar and commonplace air, which made all the heads of Jewish sects appear as mere profes- sors of morals or stoics. 2 Matt. ix. 14. 'Luke iii. 11. 4Matt. iii. 13, and following; Mark i. 9, and following; Luke iii. 21, and following; John i. 29, and following; iii. 22, and fol- lowing. The synoptics make Jesus come to John, before he had played any public part. But if it is true, as they state, that John recognized Jesus from the first and welcomed him, it must be supposed that Jesus was already a somewhat renowned teacher. The fourth Gospel brings Jesus to John twice, the first time while yet unknown, the second time with a band of disciples. Without touching here the question of the precise journeys of Jesus (an insoluble question, seeing the contradictions of the documents and the little care the evangelists had in being exact in such matters), and without denying that Jesus might have made a journey to John when he had as yet no notoriety, we adopt the information furnished by the fourth Gospel (iii. 22, and following), namely, that Jesus, before beginning to baptize like John, had formed ft LIFE OF JESUS. 148 comers were baptized like every one else. John wel- comed this group of Galilean disciples, and did not object to their remaining distinct from his own. The two teachers were young; they had many ideas in common; they loved one another, and publicly vied with each other in exhibitions of kindly feeling. At the first glance, such a fact surprises us in John the Baptist, and we are tempted to call it in question. Humility has never been a feature of strong Jewish minds. It might have been expected that a character so stubborn, a sort of Lamennais always irritated, would be very passionate, and suffer neither rivalry nor half adhesion. But this manner of viewing things rests upon a false conception of the person of John. We imagine him an old man ; he was, on the contrary, of the same age as Jesus,1 and very young according to the ideas of the time. In mental development, he was the brother rather than the father of Jesus. The two young enthusiasts, full of the same hopes and the same hatreds, were able to make common cause, and mutually to support each other. Certainly an aged teacher, seeing a man without celebrity approach him, and maintain toward him an aspect of independence, would have rebelled ; we have scarcely an example of a leader of a school receiving with eagerness his future successor. But youth is capable of any sacrifice, and we may admit that John, having recognized in Jesus a spirit akin to his own, accepted him without any per- sonal reservation. These good relations became after- school. We must remember, besides, that the first pages of the fourth Gospel are notes tacked together without rigorous chrono- logical arrangement. 'Luke i., although indeed all the details of the narrative, e«pe- cially those which refer to the relationship of John with Jesus, are legendary. £44 LIFE OF JESUS. ward the starting-point of a whole system developed by the evangelists, which consisted in giving the Divine mission of Jesus the primary basis of the attestation of John. Such was the degree of authority acquired by the Baptist, that it was not thought possible to find in the world a better guarantee. But far from John abdicating in favor of Jesus, Jesus, during all the time that he passed with him, recognized him as his su- perior, and only developed his own genius with timid- ity. It seems, in fact, that, notwithstanding his profound originality, Jesus, during some weeks at least, was the imitator of John. His way as yet was not clear before him. At all times, moreover, Jesus yielded much to opinion, and adopted many things which were not in exact accordance with his own ideas, or for which he cared little, merely because they were popular; but these accessories never injured his principal idea, and were always subordinate to it. Baptism had been brought by John into very great favor ; Jesus thought himself obliged to do like John ; therefore he baptized, and his disciples baptized also.1 No doubt he accom- panied baptism with preaching, similar to that of John. The Jordan was thus covered on all sides with Baptists, whose discourses were more or less successful. The pupil soon equaled the master, and his baptism was much sought after. There was on this subject some jealousy among the disciples f the disciples of John came to complain to him of the growing success of the young Galilean, whose baptism would, they thought, soon supplant his own. But the two teachers remained ^fohn iii. 22-26, iv. I, 2. The parenthesis of ver. 2 appears^ to be an interpolation, or perhaps a tardy scruple of John correcting himself. 2John iii. 26, iv. x. LIFE OF JESUS. 145 superior to this meanness. The superiority of John was, besides, too indisputable for Jesus, still little known, to think of contesting it. Jesus only wished to increase under John's protection ; and thought him- self obliged, in order to gain the multitude, to employ the external means which had given John such aston- ishing success. When he recommenced to preach after John's arrest, the first words put into his mouth are but the repetition of one of the familiar phrases of the Baptist.1 Many other of John's expressions may be found repeated verbally in the discourses of Jesus.2 The two schools appear to have lived long on good terms with each other;3 and after the death of John, Jesus, as his trusty friend, was one of the first to be informed of the event.4 John, in fact, was soon cut short in his prophetic career. Like the ancient Jewish prophets, he was, in the highest degree, a censurer of the established au- thorities.5 The extreme vivacity with which he ex- pressed himself at their expense could not fail to bring him into trouble. In Judea, John does not appear to have been disturbed by Pilate; but in Perea, beyond the Jordan, he came into the territory of Antipas. This tyrant was uneasy at the political leaven which was so little concealed by John in his preaching. The great assemblages of men gathered around the Baptist, by re- ligious and patriotic enthusiasm, gave rise to sus- picion.6 An entirely personal grievance was also added to these motives of state, and rendered the death of the austere censor inevitable. One of the most strongly marked characters of this *Matt. iii. 2, iv. 17. aMatt. iii. 7, xii. 34, xxiii. 33. 3 Matt. xi. 2-13. *Matt. xiv. 12. 5Luke iii. 19. 6Jos., Ant, XViu, v. 2. 146 LIFE OF JESUS. tragical family of the Herods was Herodias, grand- daughter of Herod the Great. Violent, ambitious, and passionate, she detested Judaism, and despised its laws.1 She had been married, probably against her will, to her uncle Herod, son of Mariamne,2 whom Herod the Great had disinherited,3 and who never played any pub- lic part. The inferior position of her husband, in re- spect to the other persons of the family, gave her no peace; she determined to be sovereign at whatever cost.4 Antipas was the instrument of whom she made use. This feeble man having become desperately en- amored of her, promised to marry her, and to repudiate his first wife, daughter of Hareth, king of Petra, and emir of the neighboring tribes of Perea. The Arabian princess, receiving a hint of this design, resolved to fly. Concealing her intention, she pretended that she wished to make a journey to Machero, in her father's territory, and caused herself to be conducted thither by the officers of Antipas.5 Makaur,6 or Machero, was a colossal fortress built by Alexander Jannaeus, and rebuilt by Herod, in one of the most abrupt wadys to the east of the Dead Sea.7 It was a wild and desolate country, filled with strange legends, and believed to be haunted by demons.8 The fortress was just on the boundary of the lands of Ha- reth and of Antipas. At that time it was in the pos- Mos., Ant., xviii. v. 4. 'Matthew (chap.xiv. 3, in the Greek text) and Mark (chap. vi. 17) have it that this was Philip; but this is certainly an inadvert- ency (see Jos., Ant., xviii. v. 1, 4). The wife of Philip was Sa- lome, daughter of Herodias. 8Jos., Ant., xvn. iv. 2. *Tbid.. xviii. vii. 1, 2 ; B. /.. n. ix. 6. °Ibid., xviii. v. I. This form is found in the Talmud of Jerusalem (Shebiit, ix. 2), and in the Targums of Jonathan and of Jerusalem (Numb. xxii. 35). 'Now Mkaur, in the wady Zerka Main. This place has not been vHtecl since Seetzen was there. 9Josephus, Dc Bell. Jud., vii. vi. I, and following. LIFE OF JESUS. 147 session of Hareth.1 The latter having been warned, had prepared everything for the flight of his daughter, who was conducted from tribe to tribe to Petra. The almost incestuous2 union of Antipas and Hero- dias then took place. The Jewish laws on marriage were a constant rock of offence between the irreligious family of the Herods and the strict Jews.3 The mem- bers of this numerous and rather isolated dynasty being obliged to marry amongst themselves, frequent viola- tions of the limits prescribed by the Law necessarily took place. John, in energetically blaming Antipas, was the echo of the general feeling.4 This was more than sufficient to decide the latter to follow up his suspicions. He caused the Baptist to be arrested, and ordered him to be shut up in the fortress of Machero, which he had probably seized after the departure of the daughter of Hareth.5 More timid than cruel, Antipas did not desire to put him to death. According to certain rumors, he feared a popular sedition.6 According to another version,7 he had taken pleasure in listening to the prisoner, and these conversations had thrown him into great per- plexities. It is certain that the detention was pro- longed, and that John, in his prison, preserved an ex- tended influence. He corresponded with his disciples, and we find him again in connection with Jesus. His faith in the near approach of the Messiah only became firmer ; he followed with attention the movements out- side, and sought to discover in them the signs favorable to the accomplishment of the hopes which he cherished. 'Jos., Ant., xvm, v. i. 2Lev. xviii. 16. 8Tos., Ant, xv. vii. 10. 4Matt. xiv. 4 ; Mark vi. 18 ; Luke iii. 19. 6Jos., Ant., xvm. v. 2. •Matt. xiv. 5. TMark vi. 20. I read ffTropei, and not enoiei. CHAPTER VII. DEVELOPMENT OF THE IDEAS OF JESUS RESPECTING} THE KINGDOM OF GOD. Up to the arrest of John, which took place about the summer of the year 29, Jesus did not quit the neigh- borhood of the Dead Sea and of the Jordan. An abode in the desert of Judea was generally considered as the preparation for great things, as a sort of "retreat" be- fore public acts. Jesus followed in this respect the example of others, and passed forty days with no other companions than savage beasts, maintaining a rigorous fast. The disciples speculated much concerning this sojourn. The desert was popularly regarded as the residence of demons.1 There exist in the world few regions more desolate, more abandoned by God, more shut out from life, than the rocky declivity which forms the western shore of the Dead Sea. It was believed that during the time which Jesus passed in this fright- ful country, he had gone through terrible trials; that Satan had assailed him with his illusions, or tempted him with seductive promises; that afterward, in order to recompense him for his victory, the angels had come to minister to him.2 It was probably in coming from the desert that lTobit viii. 3; Luke xi. 24. 2Matt. iv. 1, and following; Mark i. 12, 13; Luke iv. 1, and fol- lowing-. Certainly, the striking similarity that these narratives present to the analogous legends of the Vcudidad (farg. xix.) and of the Lalitavistara (chap, xvii., xviii., xxi.) would lead us to regard them only as myths. But the meagre and concise narra- tive of Mark, which evidently represents on this point the primi- tive compilation, leads us to suppose a real fact, which furnished later the theme of legendary developments. 148 LIFE OF JESUS. 149 Jesus learned of the arrest of John the Baptist. He had no longer any reason to prolong his stay in a coun- try which was partly strange to him. Perhaps he feared also being involved in the severities exercised toward John, and did not wish to expose himself, at a time in which, seeing the little celebrity he had, his death could in no way serve the progress of his ideas. He regained Galilee,1 his true home, ripened by an important experience, and having, through contact with a great man, very different from himself, acquired a consciousness of his own originality. On the whole, the influence of John had been more hurtful than useful to Jesus. It checked his develop- ment; for everything leads us to believe that he had, when he descended toward the Jordan, ideas superior to those of John, and that it was by a sort of concession that he inclined for a time toward baptism. Perhaps if the Baptist, whose authority it would have been diffi- cult for him to escape, had remained free, Jesus would not have been able to throw off the yoke of external rites and ceremonies, and would then, no doubt, have remained an unknown Jewish sectary; for the world would not have abandoned its old ceremonies merely for others of a different kind. It has been by the power of a religion, free from all external forms, that Christianity has attracted elevated minds. The Bap- tist once imprisoned, his school was soon diminished, and Jesus found himself left to his own impulses. The only things he owed to John, were lessons in preaching and in popular action. From this moment, in fact, he preached with greater power, and spoke to the mul- titude with authority.2 ^att. iv. 12 ; Mark i. 14 ; Luke iv. 14 ; John iv. 3. 2Matt. vii. 29 ; Mark i. 22 ; Luke iv. 32. 150 LIFE OF JESUS, It seems also that his sojourn with John had, not so much by the influence of the Baptist, as by the natural progress of his own thought, considerably ripened his ideas on "the kingdom of heaven/' His watchword, henceforth, is the "good tidings," the announcement that the kingdom of God is at hand.1 Jesus is no longer simply a delightful moralist, aspiring to express sublime lessons in short and lively aphorisms; he is the transcendent revolutionary, who essays to renovate the world from its very basis, and to establish upon earth the ideal which he had conceived. "To await the kingdom of God" is henceforth synonymous with being a disciple of Jesus.2 This phrase, "kingdom of God," or "kingdom of heaven," was, as we have said, already long familiar to the Jews. But Jesus gave it a moral sense, a social application, which even the author of the Book of Daniel, in his apocalyptic enthusiasm, had scarcely dared to imagine. He declared that in the present world evil is the reigning power. Satan is "the prince of this world,"3 and everything obeys him. The kings kill the proph- ets. The priests and the doctors do not that which they command others to do; the righteous are perse- cuted, and the only portion of the good is weeping. The "world" is in this manner the enemy of God and His saints;4 but God will awaken and avenge His saints. The day is at hand, for the abomination is at its height. The reign of goodness will have its turn. The advent of this reign of goodness will be a great ^ark i. 14, 15. 2 Mark xv. 43. 8John xii. 31, xiv. 30, xvi. 11. (Comp. 2 Cor. iv. 4; Ephes. ii. 4John i. 10, vii. 7, xiv. 17. 22 27, xv. 18, and following; xvi. 8, 20, 2>3' xvii. 9, 14, 16, 25. This meaning of the word "world" is especially applied in the writings of Paul and John. LIFE OF JESUS. 151 and sudden revolution. The world will seem to be turned upside down ; the actual state being bad, in order to represent the future, it suffices to conceive nearly the reverse of that which exists. The first shall be last.1 A new order shall govern humanity. Now the good and the bad are mixed, like the tares and the good grain in a field. The master lets them grow together; but the hour of violent separation will arrive.2 The king- dom of God will be as the casting of a great net, which gathers both good and bad fish ; the good are preserved, and the rest are thrown away.3 The germ of this great revolution will not be recognizable in its beginning. It will be like a grain of mustard-seed, which is the smallest of seeds, but which, thrown into the earth, becomes a tree under the foliage of which the birds repose;4 or it will be like the leaven which, deposited in the meal, makes the whole to ferment.5 A series of parables, often obscure, was designed to express the suddenness of this event, its apparent injustice, and its inevitable and final character.6 Who was to establish this kingdom of God? Let us remember that the first thought of Jesus, a thought so deeply rooted in him that it had probably no begin- ning, and formed part of his very being, was that he was the Son of God, the friend of his Father, the doer of his will. The answer of Jesus to such a question could not therefore be doubtful. The persuasion that he was to establish the kingdom of God took absolute 'Matt. xix. 30, xx. 16; Mark x. 31 ; Luke xiii. 30. 2Matt. xiii. 24, and following. 3Matt. xiii. 47, and following. 4Matt. xiii. 31, and following: Mark iv. 3T, and following; Luke xiii. 19, and following. 6Matt. xiii. 33; Luke xiii. 2T. 8Matt. xiii. entirely: xviii. 23, and following; xx. I, and follow- ing; Luke xiii. 18, and following. 152 LIFE OF JESUS. possession of his mind. He regarded himself as the universal reformer. The heavens, the earth, the whole of nature, madness, disease, and death, were but his instruments. In his paroxysm of heroic will, he be- lieved himself all powerful. If the earth would not submit to this supreme transformation, it would be broken up, purified by fire, and by the breath of God. A new heaven would be created, and the entire world would be peopled with the angels of God.1 A radical revolution,2 embracing even nature itself, was the fundamental idea of Jesus. Henceforward, without doubt, he renounced politics; the example of Judas, the Gaulonite, had shown him the inutility of popular seditions. He never thought of revolting against the Romans and tetrarchs. His was not the unbridled and anarchical principle of the Gaulonite. His submission to the established powers, though really derisive, was in appearance complete. He paid tribute to Caesar, in order to avoid disturbance. Liberty and right were not of this world, why should he trouble his life with vain anxieties? Despising the earth, and convinced that the present world was not worth caring for, he took refuge in his ideal kingdom ; he established the great doctrine of transcendent disdain,3 the true doctrine of liberty of souls, which alone can give peace. But he had not yet said, "My kingdom is not of this world." Much darkness mixed itself with even his most correct views. Sometimes strange temptations crossed his mind. In the desert of Judea, Satan had offered him the kingdoms of the earth. Not knowing the power of the Roman empire, he might, with the enthusiasm there was in the heart of Judea, and which 1Matt. xxii. 30. ^Aitoxccrd.6 radii navTc*)v% Acts iii. 21. 3 Matt. xvii. 23-26; xxii. 16-22. LIFE OF JESUS. 153 ended soon after in so terrible an outbreak, Hope to establish a kingdom by the number and the daring of his partisans. Many times, perhaps, the supreme ques- tion presented itself — will the kingdom of God be realized by force or by gentleness, by revolt or by patience ? One day, it is said, the simple men of Gali- lee wished to carry him away and make him king,1 but Jesus fled into the mountain and remained there some time alone. His noble nature preserved him from the error which would have made him^ an agitator, or a chief of rebels, a Theudas or a Barko1|eba. The revolution he wished to effect was always a moral revolution ; but he had not yet begun to trust to the angels and the last trumpet for its execution. It was upon men and by the aid of men themselves that he wished to act. A visionary who had no other idea than the proximity of the last judgment, would not have had this care for the amelioration of man, and would not have given utterance to the finest moral teaching that humanity has received. Much vague- ness no doubt tinged his ideas, and it was rather a noble feeling than a fixed design, that urged him to the sublime work which was realized by him, though in a very different manner to what he imagined. It was indeed the kingdom of God, or in other words, the kingdom of the Spirit, which he founded; and if Jesus, from the bosom of his Father, sees his work bear fruit in the world, he may indeed say with truth, "This is what I have desired." That which Jesus founded, that which will remain eternally his, allowing for the imperfections which mix themselves with everything realized by humanity, is the doctrine of the liberty of the soul. Greece had already had beautiful ideas on 'John vi. 15. 154 LIFE OF JESUS. this subject.1 Various stoics had learned how to be free even under a tyrant. But in general the ancient world had regarded liberty as attached to certain po- litical forms; freedom was personified in Harmodius and Aristogiton, Brutus and Cassius. The true Chris- tion enjoys more real freedom; here below he is an exile; what matters it to him who is the transitory governor of this earth, which is not his home? Lib- erty for him is truth.2 Jesus did not know history suffi- ciently to understand that such a doctrine came most opportunely at the moment when republican liberty ended, and when the small municipal constitutions of antiquity were absorbed in the unity of the Roman empire. But his admirable good sense, and the truly prophetic instinct which he had of his mission, guided him with marvelous certainty. By the sentence, "Ren- der unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and to God the things which are God's," he created some- thing apart from politics, a refuge for souls in the midst of the empire of brute force. Assuredly, such a doctrine had its dangers. To establish as a principle that we must recognize the legitimacy of a power by the inscription on its coins, to proclaim that the perfect man pays tribute with scorn and without question, was to destroy republicanism in the ancient form, and to favor all tyranny. Christianity, in this sense, has con- tributed much to weaken the sense of duty of the citi- zen, and to deliver the world into the absolute power of existing circumstances. But in constituting an immense free association, which during three hundred years was able to dispense with politics, Christianity amply compensated for the wrong it had done to civic 1See Stobseus, Florilcgium, ch. Ixii., Ixxvii., lxxxvi., and fol- lowing. 2John viii. 32, and following-. LIFE OP JESUS. 155 virtues. The power of the state was limited to the things of earth ; the mind was freed, or at least the ter- rible rod of Roman omnipotence was broken forever. The man who is especially preoccupied with the duties of public life, does not readily forgive those who attach little importance to his party quarrels. He es- pecially blames those who subordinate political to social questions, and profess a sort of indifference for the former. In one sense he is right, for exclusive power is prejudicial to the good government of human affairs. But what progress have "parties" been able to effect in the general morality of our species? If Jesus, instead of founding his heavenly kingdom, had gone to Rome, had expended his energies in conspiring against Ti- berius, or in regretting Germanicus, what would have become of the world? As an austere republican, or zealous patriot, he would not have arrested the great current of the affairs of his age, but in declaring that politics are insignificant, he has revealed to the world this truth, that one's country is not everything, and that the man is before, and higher than, the citizen. Our principles of positive science are offended by the dreams contained in the programme of Jesus. We know the history of the earth ; cosmical revolutions of the kind which Jesus expected are only produced by geological or astronomical causes, the connection of which with spiritual things has never yet been demon- strated. But, in order to be just to great originators, they must not be judged by the prejudices in which they have shared. Columbus discovered America, though starting from very erroneous ideas; Newton believed his foolish explanation of the Apocalypse to be as true as his system of the world. Shall we place an ordinary man of our time above a Francis d'Assisi, 156 LIFE OF JESUS. a St. Bernard, a Joan of Arc, or a Luther, because he is free from errors which these last have professed? Should we measure men by the correctness of their ideas of physics, and by the more or less exact knowl- edge which they possess of the true system of the world ? Let us understand better the position of Jesus and that which made his power. The Deism of the eighteenth century, and a certain kind of Protestant- ism, have accustomed us to consider the founder of the Christian faith only as a great moralist, a benefactor of mankind. We see nothing more in the Gospel than good maxims ; we throw a prudent veil over the strange intellectual state in which it was originated. There are even persons who regret that the French Revolu- tion departed more than once from principles, and that it was not brought about by wise and moderate men. Let us not impose our petty and commonplace ideas on these extraordinary movements so far above our every- day life. Let us continue to admire the "morality of the gospel" — let us suppress in our religious teachings the chimera which was its soul; but do not let us be- lieve that with the simple ideas of happiness, or of indi- vidual morality, we stir the world. The idea of Jesus was much more profound ; it was the most revolution- ary idea ever formed in a human brain; it should be taken in its totality, and not with those timid suppres- sions which deprive it of precisely that which has ren- dered it efficacious for the regeneration of humanity. The ideal is ever a Utopia. When we wish now- adays to represent the Christ of the modern conscience, the consoler, and the judge of the new times, what course do we take? That which Jesus himself did eighteen hundred and thirty years ago. We suppose* the conditions of the real world quite other than what LIFE OF JESUS. 15? they are; we represent a moral liberator breaking with- out weapons the chains of the negro, ameliorating the condition of the poor, and giving liberty to oppressed nations. We forget that this implies the subversion of the world, the climate of Virginia and that of Congo modified, the blood and the race of millions of men changed, our social complications restored to a chi- merical simplicity, and the political stratifications of Europe displaced from their natural order. The "res- titution of all things"1 desired by Jesus was not more difficult. This new earth, this new heaven, this new Jerusalem which comes from above, this cry : "Behold I make all things new !"2 are the common character- istics of reformers. The contrast of the ideal with the sad reality, always produces in mankind those revolts against unimpassioned reason which inferior minds re- gard as folly, till the day arrives in which they triumph, and in which those who have opposed them are the first to recognize their reasonableness. That there may have been a contradiction between the belief in the approaching end of the world and the general moral system of Jesus, conceived in prospect of a permanent state of humanity, nearly analogous to that which now exists, no one will attempt to deny.3 It was exactly this contradiction that insured the suc- cess of his work. The millenarian alone would have done nothing lasting; the moralist alone would have done nothing powerful. The millenarianism gave the impulse, the moralist insured the future. Hence Christianity united the two conditions of great success ^Acts iii, 21. 2Rcv. xxi. I, 2, 5. sThe millenarian sects of England present the same contrast, I mean the belief in the near end of the world, notwithstanding much good sense in the conduct of life, and an extraordinary understanding of commercial affairs and industry. 158 LIFE OP JESUS. in this world, a revolutionary starting-point, and the possibility of continuous life. Everything which is in- tended to succeed ought to respond to these two wants; for the world seeks both to change and to last. Jesus, at the same time that he announced an unparalleled sub- version in human affairs, proclaimed the principles upon which society has reposed for eighteen hundred years. That which in fact distinguishes Jesus from the agi- tators of his time, and from those of all ages, is his perfect idealism. Jesus, in some respects, was an anarchist, for he had no idea of civil government. That government seemed to him purely and simply an abuse. He spoke of it in vague terms, and as a man of the people who had no idea of politics. Every magistrate appeared to him a natural enemy of the people of God ; he prepared his disciples for contests with the civil powers, without thinking for a moment that there was anything in this to be ashamed of.1 But he never shows any desire to put himself in the place of the rich and the powerful. He wishes to annihilate riches and power, but not to appropriate them. He predicts per- secution and all kinds of punishment to his disciples ;2 but never once does the thought of armed resistance appear. The idea of being all-powerful by suffering land resignation, and of triumphing over force by pur- ity of heart, is indeed an idea peculiar to Jesus. Jesus lis not a spiritualist, for to him everything tended to a jpalpable realization; he had not the least notion of a jsoul separated from the body. But he is a perfect idealist, matter being only to him the sign of the idea, I 1Matt. x. 17, 18; Luke xii. 11. 2 Matt. v. 10, and following; x. entirely; Luke vi. 22, and follow- ing; John xv. 18, and following; xvi. 2, and following, 20, 3^ xvii. 14. LIFE OF JESTJS. 159 and the real, the living expression of that which does not appear. To whom should we turn, to whom should we trust to establish the kingdom of God? The mind of Jesus on this point never hesitated. That which is highly esteemed among men, is abomination in the sight of God.1 The founders of the kingdom of God are the simple. Not the rich, not the learned, not priests ; but women, common people, the humble, and the young.2 The great characteristic of the Messiah is, that "the poor have the gospel preached to them,"8 The idyllic and gentle nature of Jesus here resumed the superior- ity. A great social revolution, in which rank will be overturned, in which all authority in this world will be humiliated, was his dream. The world will not believe him ; the world will kill him. But his disciples will not be of the wTorld.4 They will be a little flock of the humble and the simple, who will conquer by their very humility. The idea which has made "Christian" the antithesis of "worldly," has its full justification in the thoughts of the master.5 *Luke xvi. 15. 'Matt. v. 3, 10, xviii. 3, xix. 14, 23, 24, xxi. 31, xxii. 2, and fol- lowing; Mark x. 14, 15, 23-25; Luke iv. 18, and following; vi. 20, xviii. 16, 17, 24, 25. 3Matt. xi. 5. *John xv. 19, xvii. 14, 16. 5 See especially chapter xvii. of St. John, expressing, if not a real discourse delivered by Jesus, at least a sentiment which was very deeply rooted in his disciples, and which certainly came from him. CHAPTER VIII. JESUS AT CAPERNAUM. Beset by an idea, gradually becoming more and more imperious and exclusive, Jesus proceeds hence- forth with a kind of fatal impassibility in the path marked out by his astonishing genius and the extraor- dinary circumstances in which he lived. Hitherto he had only communicated his thoughts to a few persons secretly attracted to him; henceforward his teaching was sought after by the public. He was about thirty years of age.1 The little group of hearers who had accompanied him to John the Baptist had, doubtless, in- creased, and perhaps some disciples of John had at- tached themselves to him.2 It was with this first nucleus of a church that he boldly announced, on his return into Galilee, the "good tidings of the kingdom of God." This kingdom was approaching, and it was he, Jesus, who was that "Son of Man" whom Daniel had beheld in his vision as the divine herald of the last and supreme revelation. We must remember, that in the Jewish ideas, which were averse to art and mythology, the simple form of man had a superiority over that of Cherubs, and of the fantastic animals which the imagination of the people, since it had been subjected to the influence of Assyria, had ranged around the Divine Majesty. Already in Ezekiel,3 the Being seated on the supreme throne, far aLuke iii. 23; Gospel of the Ebionites, in Epiph., Adv. Hcer., xxx. 13. *John i. 37, and following. 3Chap. i. 5, 26, and following. 160 LIFE OF JESUS. 161 above the monsters of the mysterious chariot, the great revealer of prophetic visions, had the figure of a man. In the book of Daniel, in the midst of the vision of the empires, represented by animals, at the moment when the great judgment commences, and when the books are opened, a Being "like unto a Son of Man," ad- vances toward the Ancient of days, who confers on him the power to judge the world, and to govern it for eternity.1 Son of Man, in the Semitic languages, es- pecially in the Aramean dialects, is a simple synonym of man. But this chief passage of Daniel struck the mind ; the words, Son of Man, became, at least in cer- tain schools,2 one of the titles of the Messiah, regarded as judge of the world, and as king of the new era about to be inaugurated.3 The application which Jesus made of it to himself was therefore the proclamation of his Messiahship, and the affirmation of the coming catastrophe in which he was to figure as judge, clothed with the full powers which had been delegated to him by the Ancient of days.4 The success of the teaching of the new prophet was this time decisive. A group of men and women, all characterized by the same spirit of juvenile frankness and simple innocence, adhered to him, and said, "Thou art the Messiah." As the Messiah was to be the son of David, they naturally conceded him this title, which was synonymous with the former. Jesus allowed it aDaniel vii. 13, 14 ; comp. viii. 15, x. 16. 2In John xii. 34, the Jews do not appear to be aware of the meaning of this word. 3Book of Enoch, xlvi. 1-3, xlviii. 2, 3, lxii. 9, 14, lxx. 1 (division of Dilmann) ; Matt. x. 23, xiii. 41, xvi. 27, 28, xix. 28, xxiv. 27, 30, 37, 39, 44, xxv. 31, xxvi. 64; Mark xiii. 26, xiv. 62; Luke xii. 40, xvii. 24, 26, 30, xxi. 27, 36, xxii. 69; Acts vii. 55. But the most significant passage is John v. 27, compared with Rev. i. 13, xiv. 14. The expression ''Son of woman," for the Messiah, occurs once in the book of Enoch, lxii. 5. 4John v. 22, 27. 1C,2 LIFE OF JESUS. with pleasure to be given to him, although it might cause him some embarrassment, his birth being well known. The name which he preferred himself was that of "Son of Man," an apparently humble title, but one which connected itself directly with the Messianic hopes. This was the title by which he designated him- self,1 and he used "The Son of Man" as synonymous with the pronoun "I," which he avoided. But he was never thus addressed, doubtless because the name in question would be fully applicable to him only on the day of his future appearance. His centre of action, at this epoch of his life, was the little town of Capernaum, situated on the shore of the lake of Gennesareth. The name of Capernaum, containing the word caphar, "village," seems to desig- nate a small town of the ancient character, in oppo- sition to the great towns built according to the Roman method, like Tiberias.2 That name was so little known that Josephus, in one passage of his writings,3 takes it for the name of a fountain, the fountain having more celebrity than the village situated near it. Like Naz- areth, Capernaum had no history, and had in no way participated in the profane movement favored by the Herods. Jesus was much attached to this town, and made it a second home.4 Soon after his return, he at- tempted to commence his work at Nazareth, but with- out success.5 He could not perform any miracle there, *This title occurs eighty-three times in the Gospels, and always in the discourses of Jesus. 2It is true that Tell-Houm, which is generally identified with Capernaum, contains the remains of somewhat fine monuments. But, besides this identification being doubtful, these monuments may be of the second or third century after Christ. aB. /., in. x. 8. *Matt. ix. I ; Mark ii. i. "Matt. xiii. 54, and following; Mark vi. I, and following; Luke iv. 16, and following, 23-24 ; John iv. 44. LIFE OF JESUS. 163 according* to the simple remark of one of his biog- raphers.1 The knowledge which existed there about his family, not an important one, injured his authority too much. People could not regard as the son of David, one whose brother, sister, and brother-in-law they saw every day, and it is remarkable besides, that his family were strongly opposed to him, and plainly refused to believe in his mission.2 The Nazarenes, much more violent, wished, it is said, to kill him by throwing him from a steep rock.3 Jesus aptly re- marked that this treatment was the fate of all great men, and applied to himself the proverb, "No one is a prophet in his own country." This check far from discouraged him. He returned to Capernaum,4 where he met with a much more favor- able reception, and from thence he organized a series of missions among the small surrounding towns. The people of this beautiful and fertile country were scarce- ly ever assembled except on Saturday. This was the day which he chose for his teaching. At that time each town had its synagogue, or place of meeting. This was a rectangular room, rather small, with a por- tico, decorated in the Greek style. The Jews not hav- ing any architecture of their own, never cared to give these edifices an original style. The remains of many ancient synagogues still exist in Galilee.5 They are all constructed of large and good materials; but their *Mark vi. 5 ; cf. Matt. xii. 58 ; Luke iv. 23. 2Matt. xiii. 57 ; Mark vi. 4 ; John vii. 3, and following. 8 Luke iv. 29. Probably the rock referred to here is the peak which is very near Nazareth, above the present church of the Maronites, and not the pretended Mount of Precipitation, at an hour's journey from Nazareth. See Robinson, ii. 335, and fol- lowing. *Matt. iv. 13; Luke iv. 31. 5 At Tell-Houm. Trbid (Arbela), Meiron (Mero), JiscH (Gis- cala), Kasyoun, Nabartein, and two at Kefr-Bereim. 164 LIFE OF JESUS. style is somewhat paltry, in consequence of the pro- fusion of floral ornaments, foliage, and twisted work, which characterize the Jewish buildings.1 In the interior there were seats, a chair for public reading, and a closet to contain the sacred rolls.2 These edifices, which had nothing of the character of a temple, were the centre of the whole Jewish life. There the people assembled on the Sabbath for prayer, and reading of the law and the prophets. As Judaism, except in Jeru- salem, had, properly speaking, no clergy, the first comer stood up, gave the lessons of the day (parasha and haphtara), and added thereto a mid rash, or entirely personal commentary, in which he expressed his own ideas.3 This was the origin of the "homily," the finished model of which we find in the small treatises of Philo. The audience had the right of making ob- jections and putting questions to the reader; so that the meeting soon degenerated into a kind of free as- sembly. It had a president,4 "elders,"5 a hazzan, i. c, a recognized reader, or apparitor,0 deputies,7 who were !I dare not decide upon the age of those buildings, nor con- sequently affirm that Jesus taught in any of them. How great would be the interest attaching to the synagogue of Tell-Houm were we to admit such an hypothesis ! The great synagogue of Kefr-Bereim seems to me the most ancient of all. Its style is moderately pure. That of Kasyoun bears a Greek inscription of the time of Septimus Severus. The great importance which Judaism acquired in Upper Galilee after the Roman war, leads us to be- lieve that several of these edifices only date back to the third century — a time in which Tiberias became a sort of capital of Judaism. 2 2 Esdras viii. 4 ; Matt, xxiii. 6; Epist. James ii. 3; Mishnah. Megilla, iii. 1 ; Rosh Hasshana, iv. 7, etc. See especially the curi- ous description of the synagogue of Alexandria in the Talmud of Babylon, Sukka, 51 b. 3 Philo, quoted in Eusebius, Pra>p. Evang., viii. 7, and Quod Omnis Probus Liber, § 12; Luke iv. 16; Acts xiii. 15, xv. 21; Mishnah, Megilla, iii. 4, and following. ^Apxicrvvayooyos. bIIps6/3vrspoi. 6lTnrjpeTi]Z. 1'Aito